HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGERS IN THE FACE OF SUFFERING. AN ETHICAL QUESTION

Abstract

Companies seem to be taking more and more interest in people. However, this greater concern has still not led to human resources managers adequately dealing with the problem of suffering within their organisations even when they are unanimous in acknowledging the existence of the phenomenon.The purpose of this article is to study some of the aspects of the problem, connected with the ethical dimension of the issue, as an applied version of the Moral Philosophy to the professional work of the managers of people in the organizational framework.The aim of the study shall be delimited and qualitative empirical research is done by conducting in-depth interviews with eight human resources managers –a figure which, as indicated, saturates the sample.The results that emerge from the study, obtained with the qualitative information analysis program NVivo, are contrasted with the ethical perspective deriving from Kantian ethics and the formulation of the categorical imperative known as The Humanity Formula, which we axiomatically assume as the criteria of morality. We approach this issue as field work needed to help analyse the ethical consequences of this situation, as well as to try to contribute ways to handle suffering within companies.