Following reports of what Lucy Adams has had to say about her role as HR director in the BBC executive pay-offs imbroglio, there is much debate around at the moment about whether HR should fulfil the role of moral conscience of an organisation. This is of course not the first time this notion has been mooted. At the time of the banking crisis it was suggested that HR directors should have taken responsibility for challenging those at the top on their high risk and unethical practices.

A number of things about this sit ill with me. The role of HR is certainly to champion this approach and provide the frameworks, processes and tools to enable it to happen. These are some of the ways in which a culture of integrity is promoted, and it is the role of the whole leadership team to nurture that. Where this is the case, although any selection process is bound to let in the odd bad apple, there will be a strong alliance between the rest of the top team to confront deviant behaviours from any individual as they emerge, and no lone challenger is out on a limb. Anyone who has worked in a senior role in HR for any length of time knows that when the rot is set in at the top, no HR director, however skilled and influential, can get any traction.

Lessons from the Past; Paths to the Future ed. Visser, McIntosh and Middleton format Hardback date July isbn pages more details http: The cartoon is entitled A Gift from the Corporate World! It shows the doors of the summit opened wide to embrace a Trojan horse. The Trojan horse of Homeric myth remains a potent image for the potential danger of the gift. The metaphor suggests that, like the Trojans, in receiving gifts we can unwittingly be embracing our own enslavement.

Should HR be the moral conscience of an organisation?

However, I question whether the lines between CSR and philanthropy are not blurred, whether the notion of CSR is not profoundly bound up with the politics of the gift. While the rhetoric and form of CSR have been transformed, this chapter challenges the assumption that these discursive developments represent a philosophical shift from philanthropy to responsibility. Conventional models of modern capitalist economics have always claimed the inde- pendence of the market from other forms of social life and from the concerns of moral- ity.

Yet, The Economist tells us that: This chapter is concerned with what might be called the moral underpinning of CSR. CSR seems at times to be held up to represent the triumph of selfless good over the selfish pursuit of profit. Ultimately we must ask: Writing on CSR often overlooks both the moral and the social dimensions of CSR which are veiled by the sanitised discourse of policy and corporate rhetoric. Such writ- ing reduces corporations to the skeleton of their structural borders, neglecting the social relations created, shaped and sustained by the practice of CSR, and overlooking the less tangible shape of the corporation, extending its reach through its army of con- sultants, networks of partnerships, and subsidiaries.

Equally, research often tends to view institutions as manifestations of singular sectional interests. In doing so, it aims to shed light on new regimes of power created by these encounters and the ways in which they are authenticated through an appeal to a moral narrative of responsibility. As the resident anthropologist of one mining company put it: Between policy and practice In recent years, significant attention has been devoted to developing effective, com- prehensive CSR policy both within companies and in the national and international are- nas concerned with the role of corporations as vehicles for SD.

Policy is all too often taken as state- ments not only of intentions, but also of activity. This chapter challenges the prevailing belief that the practice of CSR is driven by policy rather than by an intricate web of social relations, power dynamics and organisational culture interacting within constantly changing socioeconomic realities. Policy claims to be, and is seen to be, concerned with apolitical and pragmatic goals such as efficiency and productivity.

The formal framework of policy has the effect of isolating and institutionalising a particular belief or position as a collective good. CSR policy-making is framed in terms of an objectively identifiable societal or collective need and expressed through the language of scientific rationalism, masking the moral impetus behind a policy or decision under a veil of neutrality.

Policy can thus be seen as part of the political technology used to remove the highly political issue of social responsibility from the realm of moral discourse, by translating it into a neutral language of science and pragmatism. The notion of responsibility is therefore stripped of its subjective nature and the discursive framework from which it derives.

Yet a disjuncture exists. On the other hand, a contradictory impulse exists in the re- connection of business with notions of virtue—an impulse that enshrouds CSR with the language of moral and, at times, almost spiritual duty. As one CSR manager put it: The sense of moral mission is evoked by one such CSI manager: I have visions of being a Mother Theresa in khaki pants and white shirt.

I have visions of.

Thus the power of this moral discourse resides in its ability to mask itself behind the current orthodoxies of sustainability, empowerment and partici- pation and the technology of policy and management systems. Such statements express a grand modernising paradigm of development, underscored by the concept of progress towards a singular, technological concept of modernity. The language of CSR can therefore be viewed as part of the modernising discourse of development, as it espouses a universal vision of social improvement and elevates the corporation as both architect and agent of this vision.

Thus the SD manager of a major mining house stated that: The appeal to the concept of responsibility—and the agenda of care it implies—supports the role of transnational corporations TNCs as dominant institutions of governmentality, for, as Ferguson argues, claims to moral purpose have enormous power in their ability to naturalise authority Ferguson Nevertheless, CSR within mining corporations takes on many of the forms of the anthropological concept of the gift.

Personal and organisational relationships between the corporation and the community are both expressed and transformed by the process of giving. When I was at Ingenious working in their clean energy function, we founded and developed a joint venture between the Ingenious Group and another company which became the largest privately owned energy asset in the UK.

My role involved transactional due diligence, setting up the company, setting up articles and setting up the governance structure.

The Conscience of an Organisation: Life as a Company Secretary

The joy of working as a company secretary is that you get given work from the directors, shareholders and everyone involved. You need a broad legal understanding - you can be asked anything legal from day one and so I do fall back on what I learnt on the LPC. You also need to be able to retain your objectivity. You have to be ready to challenge senior people within a company and you need to do this in the appropriate way and have the legal and financial knowledge to back it up. Having to adapt to changing business needs whilst ensuring proper continuity of service.

Also, the constantly evolving legislative landscape.

Be the conscience of business

I also enjoy working alongside absolute experts and senior members of an organisation. You get unprecedented access to senior people and to why they make certain decisions.


  • Be the conscience of business | One Young World.
  • Should HR be the moral conscience of an organisation?.
  • Come costruire un e-commerce di successo (Italian Edition);
  • Does Your Business Have A Conscience??
  • ;
  • .

This is such a privilege and helps you develop a certain level of understanding. Write to the companies you are interested in — the worst thing they can do is say no. I mentored a girl outside of work who loved fashion so I encouraged her to write to relevant companies to get work experience. She wrote to Aspinal a luxury leather goods manufacturer and retailer and ended up working for them for a couple of months. Enjoy — you are constantly learning and developing. The Conscience of an Organisation: The conscience of an organisation Working in such close proximity to the board of directors inevitably means being privy to some of the most important decisions made within a company.

Case Study Ceri James What is your role? What is your background? What are your qualifications? What are the biggest challenges in your job? What is the best thing about your job? What advice would you give to somebody who is interested in your career? I am assistant company secretary at PA Consulting Group, which is a global consultancy firm. What skills do you need to succeed in your job?


  1. The Conscience of an Organisation: Life as a Company Secretary;
  2. Prison Sucks.
  3. Violent Phenomena in the Universe (Dover Science Books).
  4. The creative ways foreign aid groups are boosting rural economies.
  5. ;
  6. ;

    7. Published in Firm Features.