Research in the Decision Sciences for Global Business: Best Papers from the 2013 Annual Conference

10. The Whole of the Moon: Transforming from a Unitarist to a Pluralist Perspective

—Balázs Heidrich, Ph.D., Budapest Business School

—Nick Chandler, Ph.D. Candidate, Budapest Business School

Abstract

The perspective of an organizational culture may be unitarist, pluralist, or anarchist (Martin 2002). Having reviewed a selection of HR literature, it seems that the majority of them take the unitarist perspective. Using the findings of an empirical study of a large complex organization in Hungary, it is found that a unitarist perspective is an oversimplification and that subcultures exhibit aspects of both heterogeneity and homogeneity. This duality presents complications for the HR specialist in areas such as selection, training, and performance ...