In particular, the "capacity" for integrity is regarded as a foundation of appropriate HR education, along with a pluralistic perspective as opposed to a "monotonist" (single) perspective.

The key context for morally responsible HRM education and practice is multi-dimensional and divided by two overarching perspectives on the purpose of business and the corporation: the monotonist and the pluralist perspectives (Donaldson and Dunfee, 1999).

The monotonist perspective maintains that the purpose of business and the corporation is the legal, short-term maximization of shareholder wealth (Friedman, 2002).

The monotonist endorses investor capitalism and the efficient market hypothesis, i.e., that the unregulated market guided by an invisible hand will always generate the most efficient, rapid, and accurate determination of the price of any entity including human resources.

The monotonist perspective is represented by the investor capitalism quadrant in the lower right of the figure.

Next, each quadrant will be treated in a clockwise fashion starting with the monotonist perspective represented by the investor capitalism quadrant in the lower right of Figure 1.

There does not appear to be support in the monotonist literature for the broad interpretation of this language, [54] although, as might be expected, pluralists advocate such a reading.

If there is support for the monotonist position, then the straightforward norm of shareholder primacy is ethically required.

Green argues that strict adherence to the monotonist view can cause--or even require--managers to ignore critical risks to stakeholders if acting on those risks would decrease shareholder wealth.

[12] Working from a foundation of liberty, monotonists assume that non-shareholders with an interest in corporate decisions can either explicitly contract to protect their interests, [13] or can be treated as having implicitly contracted with shareholders to represent their interests.

The debate between monotonists and pluralists has run on for decades, and, while its character and some of the specific issues have changed, it remains essentially a debate over the extent to which corporations should be governed to achieve objectives other than maximizing shareholder wealth.