Pluralism in Organizations: Learning from Unconventional Forms of Organizations

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12136
• Author: Emmanuel Raufflet,Johnny Boghossian,Luc Brès
• Published date: 01 April 2018
• Date: 01 April 2018

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 20, 364–386 (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12136

Pluralism in Organizations: Learning from

Unconventional Forms of Organizations

Luc Br`

es,1,2 Emmanuel Raufflet3and Johnny Boghossian1

1Faculty of Business Administration, Pavillon Palasis-Prince,2325 r ue de la Terrasse, Universit´

eLaval,Qu

´

ebec G1V

0A6, Canada, 2Universit´

e Paris Dauphine, DRM (UMR CNRS 7088), Place du Mar´

echal de Lattre de Tassigny, 75775

Paris c´

edex 16, France, and 3HEC Montreal, 3000 Chemin de la Cˆ

ote-Sainte-Catherine, Montr´

eal, QC H3T, Canada

Corresponding author email: luc.bres@fsa.ulaval.ca

The bureaucratic organizationis still regarded as the conventional organizational form,

but is ill-suited to an increasingly pluralistic world. Research on the variety of orga-

nizational forms has increased dramatically over the past three decades and offers

the potential to understand better how pluralism is manifested and managed within

organizations. However, this research remains fragmented. The purpose of this paper

is to review and synthesize research on unconventional organizations to explore how

organizations resolve or attenuate the tensions related to pluralism. Drawing from

research in leading management journals, it covers seven distinct literatures:

‘referent organization’, ‘temporary organization’, ‘pluralistic organization’, ‘meta-

organization’, ‘bridging organization’, ‘hybrid organization’ and ‘field-configuring

event’. For each literature, the authors trace the genealogy of the key concepts and

review their distinct insights regardingorganizational pluralism. They then synthesize

and discuss their collective contributions and conclude with avenues of research for

pluralism in organizations.

Introduction

ISO is a piece in a very fundamental mechanism,

which is the mechanism of global trade and technol-

ogy. And as being a part of this mechanism, of this

machine, I think ISO has a very fundamental role as

an organization that can provide communication to

make the interface between different co-chairs and

different production systems and structures, in dif-

ferent countries. So maybe you can say ISO is like

a modem. (Participant in the development of ISO

26000 standards)

In 2005, the International Organization for Stan-

dardization (ISO) launched negotiations for an

international standard on Corporate Social Respon-

sibility (CSR). Prior to that, ISO had been dedicated

to the standardization of mechanical components

and technical processes, using a singular scien-

tific/technical rationality (Murphy and Yates 2009).

When ISO entered the field of CSR, it had to contend

with multiple, competing forms of rationality,

deep-seated antagonisms between powerful actors

such as the International Trade Union Confederation,

international NGOs and the International Chamber

of Commerce, and contentious issues ranging from

corruption to child labour. Despite widespread scep-

ticism (Castka and Balzarova 2005; Tamm Hallstr ¨

om

2004, 2005), ISO created a specific organization,

the ISO Working Group on Social Responsibility

(WGSR), which facilitated the collaboration of over

450 experts from 99 countries and more than 40 inter-

national organizations, and,within five years, reached

an international consensus and published ISO 26000.

The ISO WGSR is illustrative of a highly plu-

ralist organization (Br`

es 2013; Helms et al. 2012),

one which provides a sphere for interaction and

consensus-building among diverse sets of actors. In

her research on universities, Hardy (1991, p. 131) de-

scribes highly pluralistic organizations as comprised

of ‘coalitions of actors’, where ‘goals may conflict’

and ‘conflict is normal and legitimate’, but yet ‘col-

laboration and consensus is possible’. Togain a better

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Pluralism in Organizations 365

understanding of pluralism, Hardy (1991) believes we

need first to question and transform our conventional

understanding of organizations, which she refers to

as the ‘unitary model’ of organization. This unitary

model, based on the bureaucratic form of organiza-

tion, represents more of an ideal than a reality.

In recent years, scholars haveconceptualized a vari-

ety of organizational forms that can offer compelling

insights into pluralism, but rarely have their findings

been synthesized to provide a richer understanding

of the phenomenon. In this paper, we propose to in-

tegrate diverse literatures on unconventional organi-

zations to obtain a better understanding of pluralism

within organizations. Drawing from Hardy’s (1991)

insight that organizations based on non-bureaucratic

principles must inevitably contend with some de-

gree of pluralism, we take research on unconventional

organizational forms as our starting point.

We review literatures whose central constructs

challenge the ‘unitary model’ of organization asso-

ciated with the traditional bureaucracy. We identify

and integrate what these have to say about plural-

ism. By beginning with literatures that take unconven-

tional organizational forms as their objects of study

rather than those specifically investigating pluralism,

we hope to reveal a wider range of examples of how

pluralism is manifested within organizations and draw

links between literatures that, although complemen-

tary, remain fragmented and disconnected, ultimately

for the purpose of extending our understanding of plu-

ralism. Weask: what does research on unconventional

organizations tell us about the challenges pluralism

poses within organizations and how these challenges

may be resolved?

Pluralism in management

Pluralism in Organization and Management Theory

(OMT) has garnered steady attention since 2000

(Academy of Management Review Vol. 24 No. 4 on

change and pluralism; Academy of Management Jour-

nal Vol. 57 No. 2 on relational pluralism; Adminis-

tration & Society Vol. 47 No. 9 on value pluralism;

Denis et al. 2007, Eisenhardt 2000; Glynn et al. 2000;

Lewis 2000). It is often characterized in one of two

ways: either as originating from within the organiza-

tion or as originating from without, from the broader

environment. Research that takes the first approach

focuses on pluralism’s impacts on organizational

structures and processes (Denis et al. 2007, 2012;

Glynn et al. 2000; Jarzabkowski and Fenton 2006).

Pluralism is characterized here by ‘multiple objec-

tives, diffuse power, and knowledge-based work pro-

cesses’ (Denis et al. 2007, p. 180). Diffuse power

means that, in the absence of a central authority, all

constituents can legitimately promote their perspec-

tives. This leads to situations in which ‘reconciliation

by fiat is not an option’ (Denis et al. 2001, p. 826).

Further complicating collaboration is that pluralist or-

ganizations tend to deal with ‘knowledge-based work

processes’ (Denis et al. 2007), understood as a focus

on substantive issues as opposed to procedural issues

(Simon 1976). These knowledge-based work pro-

cesses demand agreement on larger conceptual and

value-laden matters to a greater extent than the best-

practices of procedural issues. As pluralism emanates

from the power and objectives of an organization’s

constituents, it can be described as ‘internally moti-

vated pluralism’ (Jarzabkowski and Fenton 2006).

Research that takes the second approach draws

largely on the idea of ‘institutional logics’and focuses

on the broader social context to explain dynamics

internal to the organization. Western societies are or-

ganized around the central institutions of professions,

capitalism, corporations, family, the bureaucratic

state, democracy and religion, each with their own

institutional logics (Friedland 2009; Friedland and

Alford 1991). Institutional logics authorize practices,

constitute actors and define status hierarchies. Orga-

nizations are said to embody the plurality of logics

present in their environments (Pache and Santos

2010; Yu 2013), and they experience tensions when

these logics are incompatible (Besharov and Smith

2014). In this perspective, pluralism can be described

as ‘externally motivated’ (Jarzabkowski and Fenton

2006) because it is carried into organizations from

the environment. The two approaches have produced

numerous insights. However, there remains little

dialogue between them, or evenamong the literatures

that comprise them. This is despite the fact they that

many of these approaches emergedout of a shared dis-

satisfaction with the traditional idea of bureaucracy

and the assumptions about organizations it promotes.

Rise and fall of theories of traditional bureaucracy

Organization theory initially emerged with an in-

terest in the bureaucratic organizational form as a

means to achieve organizational efficiency and ef-

fectiveness. Fayol and Taylor, generally credited as

the field’s founding fathers, sought to identify best

practices based on the ‘rational-bureaucratic’ model.

The 1950s saw the appearance of contingency theory,

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