Unitary Frame of Reference

A comment frequently made about the concept of commitment is that it is too simplistic in adopting a unitary frame of reference; in other words, it assumes unrealistically that an organization consists of people with shared interests. It has been suggested by people like Cyert and March (1963), Mangham (1979) and Mintzberg (1983a) that an organization is really a coalition of interest groups, where political processes are an inevitable part of everyday life. The pluralistic perspective recognizes the legitimacy of different interests and values, and therefore asks the question ‘Commitment to what?’ Thus, as Coopey and Hartley (1991) put it, ‘commitment is not an all-or-nothing affair (though many managers might like it to be) but a question of multiple or competing commitments for the individual’.

Legge (1989) also raises this question in her discussion of strong culture as a key requirement of HRM through ‘a shared set of managerially sanctioned values’.


However, values concerned with performance, quality, service, equal opportunity and innovation are not necessarily wrong because they are managerial values. But it is not unreasonable to believe that pursuing a value such as innovation could work against the interests of employees by, for example, resulting in redundancies. And it would be quite reasonable for any employee, encouraged to behave in accordance with a value supported by management, to ask ‘What’s in it for me?’ It can also be argued that the imposition of management’s values on employees without their having any part to play in discussing and agreeing them is a form of coercion.