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Graduate Employability and the Principle of Potentiality: An Aspect of the Ethics of HRM

Journal of Business Ethics volume 111, pages 25–36 (2012)Cite this article

Abstract

The recruitment of the next generation of workers is of central concern to contemporary HRM. This paper focuses on university campuses as a major site of this process, and particularly as a new domain in which HRM’s ethical claims are configured, in which it sets and answers a range of ethical questions as it outlines the ‘ethos’ of the ideal future worker. At the heart of this ethos lies what we call the ‘principle of potentiality’. This principle is explored through a sample of graduate recruitment programmes from the Times Top 100 Graduate Employers, interpreted as ethical exhortations in HRM’s attempt to shape the character of future workers. The paper brings the work of Georg Simmel to the study of HRM’s ethics and raises the uncomfortable question that, within discourses of endless potentiality, lie ethical dangers which bespeak an unrecognised ‘tragedy of culture’. We argue that HRM fashions an ethos of work which de-recognises human limits, makes a false promise of absolute freedom, and thus becomes a tragic proposition for the individual.

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Notes

  1. The organisation that conducts these annual surveys is a consultancy called High Fliers Research (www.highfliers.co.uk accessed June 2011) that has been operating in this field since 1996 and whose annual study (entitled The UK Graduate Careers Survey) is the basis for a range of publications such as TT100.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YX, UK

    Bogdan Costea, Kostas Amiridis & Norman Crump

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  1. Bogdan Costea
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  2. Kostas Amiridis
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  3. Norman Crump
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Correspondence to Bogdan Costea.

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Costea, B., Amiridis, K. & Crump, N. Graduate Employability and the Principle of Potentiality: An Aspect of the Ethics of HRM. J Bus Ethics 111, 25–36 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1436-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1436-x

Keywords

  • Recruitment
  • University
  • Ethos
  • Morality
  • Potential
  • Simmel