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ABSTRACT
This interdisciplinary article reflects theologically on what it means to be treated ethically under regimes of Human Resource Management (HRM) in the neoliberal workplace. In replacing older models of personnel management, HRM has achieved a position of dominance that raises important pastoral and ethical questions about recognition of the personhood of workers. This article contends that because critical work on HRM within the social sciences has failed to fully engage with these fundamental questions, a turn to Black theological anthropology is invaluable in understanding the ethico-political implications of HRM. Arguing that lived experiences of “the worker” are commonly missing from theological reflection on work, it advocates the interdisciplinary use of empirical research methods from the social sciences to populate the theology of work with real workers.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the William Leech Fund and Olivia Mason for enabling this research to take place, and also Robert Song, Anthony Reddie, and two anonymous referees for suggestions that improved this article. Angela Mazzetti was generous in teaching me about visual timeline methods. My biggest debt of gratitude is to all the teachers, academics and ministers who kindly agreed to share the stories of their working lives with me.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Anthony, The Ideology of Work.
2 Friedman, “The Social Responsibility of Business.”
3 John-Paul II, Encyclical Letter.
4 Ibid., 3.
5 Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritae.
6 Hughes, The End of Work, 230–1.
7 Volf, Work in the Spirit, 119.
8 Haire, “A New Look at Human Resources,” 19.
9 Legge, Human Resource Management, 113.
10 Bowie, “A Kantian Theory.”
11 Roberts, “Contemplation and the Performative Absolute.”
12 Ibid., 5.
13 Hughes, The End of Work, 232.
14 Kidwell, “The Theology of Craft.”
15 Frémeaux and Michelson, “Human Resource Management,” 39.
16 Nihinlola, Human Being, Being Human.
17 Cortez, Theological Anthropology, 15; Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology.
18 Farris and Talifiaferro, Companion to Theological Anthropology.
19 Ware, Methodologies, 145.
20 Ibid., 149.
21 Hopkins, “A Black Theology of Liberation.”
22 Boesak, Farewell to Innocence, 1.
23 Reddie, Working Against the Grain, 1.
24 Garnet, “Call to Rebellion.”
25 McKanan, Identifying the Image of God.
26 Douglass, “The Nature of Slavery.”
27 Cone, Black Theology, Cone, 137–8.
28 Henry-Robinson, “Blackness, Black Power, and God Talk,” 123.
29 Thomas, “Anthopology, Mission, and the African Woman,” 13–14.
30 Wills, Martin Luther King Jr.
31 King, “The Ethical Demands for Integration,” 118.
32 King, “Man in a Revolutionary World,” 5.
33 Baker-Fletcher, Somebodyness.
34 King, “How Modern Christians Should Think of Man.”
35 King, “A Christmas Sermon on Peace.”
36 Reddie, Working Against the Grain, 1–5.
37 See for example Considine, “To Resist the Gravity of Whiteness.”
38 See for example Megoran, Nationalism in Central Asia.
39 Boesak, Comfort and Protest; see also Megoran, “Radical Politics and the Apocalypse.”
40 Morris and The Analogue University, “Academic Identities in the Managed University.”
41 Harding, An Inconvenient Hero.
42 The Analogue University, “Correlation in the Data University.” NB: The author is part of this writing collective.
43 Flanagan, “The Critical Incident Technique”; Chell, “Critical Incident Technique.”
44 Mazzetti and Blenkinsopp, “Evaluating a Visual Timeline Methodology,” 652.
45 Pain, “A Literature Review to Evaluate the Choice and Use of Visual Methods,” 304, 313.
46 Okoye, “Supervising Black Geography PhD Researchers in the UK.”
47 Reddie, “Richard Wayne Wills” review, 247.
48 Megoran, Human Resources?.
49 Dyck and Schroeder, “Management, Theology and Moral Points of View”; Frémeaux and Michelson, “Human Resource Management.”
50 Bunderson and Thompson, “The Call of the Wild.”
51 University and College Union, “Counting the Costs of Casualisation.”
52 For a deeper exploration of this topic, see Mason and Megoran, “Precarity and Dehumanisation in Higher Education.”
53 Sennett, The Corrosion of Character.
54 Department of Education, “Flexible Working in Schools.”
55 Rogers-Vaughan, “Powers and Principalities,” 71.
56 Lloyd, “What Love is Not.”
57 Rogers-Vaughan, “Powers and Principalities,” 88.
58 Rumscheidt, No Room for Grace, X.
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Nick Megoran
Nick Megoran is a political geographer at Newcastle University. His research is on human value and how this is degraded by nationalism, war, international borders, and neoliberal practices of “Human Resource Management.” He is the author or editor of numerous books and articles on these subjects including Nationalism in Central Asia (Pittsburgh, 2017), Warlike Christians in an Age of Violence (Wipf and Stock, 2017) and Big Questions in an Age of Global Crises (Wipf and Stock, 2022).