Pluralism in organizations : learning from unconventional forms of organizations

Abstract

The bureaucratic organization is still regarded as the conventional organizational form, but is ill-suited to an increasingly pluralistic world. Research on the variety of organizational 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, we trace the genealogy of the key concepts and review their distinct insights regarding organizational pluralism. We then synthesize and discuss their collective contributions and conclude with avenues of research for pluralism in organizations.