본 논문은 인사조직 연구의 다양한 주제들을 경쟁적 패러다임으로 비교 설명하여 현재 진행되는 이론적 연구와 실무적 현상들을 재고찰 하는데 그 목적이 있다. 이를 위해 본 연구에서는 자유주의와 공동체주의를 경쟁적 패러다임으로 사용하였고, 두 철학적 패러다임에서 설정한 인간에 대한 기본가정을 연구의 기초로 활용하였다. 자유주의 전통이 원자화된 자유행위자를 상정하고 이기심을 추구하는 경제적 인간으로 파악하는 반면에 공동체주의에서는 구성적 자아를 가진 관계인을 상정한 후 호혜성에 기반한 정치적 인간의 가정을 가지고 있다. 이런 패러다임들을 이용하여 사회적 자본, 지배구조, 인적자원관리 및 기업이론에 대한 기존 연구를 검토하고 재해석하였다. 이들 각 주제에 대해 자유주의와 공동체주의의 관점에서 어떻게 접근해야 하는지를 논의하면서 또한 각 주제와 관련하여 한국에서 수행된 기존의 연구들을 고찰하여 본 연구의 관점에서 해석하였다. 본 연구의 의의는, 우선 인사조직 분야에서의 연구에 대한 보다 명확한 방향성을 제시할 수 있는 패러다임의 활용가능성을 제시하였다는 점을 들 수 있다. 나아가 패러다임에 기초한 분야별 연계성과 쟁론을 통해 향후 연구에서 보다 의미 있는 이론화 작업의 토대를 제시하였다는 측면에서도 그 의의를 찾을 수 있겠다.
This study aims at uncovering differences in paradigm among current theories and practices that prevail in management field as well as in the market. In this study, we assume that one or more paradigms guide researchers of organization studies to decide which questions to examine and how to examine in either an explicit or implicit manner. To this end, we draw on the paradigms of liberalism and communitarianism, whose understanding of human nature sets the ground for the current studies on organizations. With these two distinct paradigms, we re-examine theories and practices in the following domains: Social capital, corporate governance, human resource management (HRM), and the theory of the firm.
Before examining the paradigmatic basis of the current studies in the field of organizations, we first review paradigmatic presuppositions that underlie explicitly or implicitly the choice of research question and the resulting method of hypothesis testing. In particular, we draw on liberalism and communitarianism to classify the current studies and uncover paradigmatic differences among these studies. Although its variants are too diverse to summarize in a succinct way, liberalism arguably has the following key features: The relative superiority of the individual over the state, a view that relegates the state into a device to serve as a safeguard for the individual and the freedom to act; the priority of the self to its ends, an individualistic view that values unconstrained choice executed by the individual, including the freedom to make mistakes; and the priority of choices judged by utilitarian ethics, a view that places prudence over any other virtues. Liberalism is well reflected into economic studies on the firm. In this stream of research, the individual is understood as homo economicus with unlimited computing capacity as well as stable, transitive preference and is supposed to decide in a way that maximizes the self-interest. Such an understanding of human nature underlies a variety of theories, including agency theory and transaction cost economics.
Communitarianism has originated as a repulse against liberalism, yet its paradigmatic presuppositions keep itself from totalitarianism. The following are its key features: The constitutive role of social identity in the formation of individual self or identity; the community of multiple identities, which acknowledges the autonomy of plural social, economic spheres in a given community; and the community of voluntary participation as opposed to one imposed exogenously on the individual. Communitarianism presumes the individual as a relational agent, who actively seeks and naturally enjoys social interactions with others.
Now, we turn to the specific topics we selected for this paper. With regard to social capital, two competing views are available. One concerns a private-good aspect of social capital, which focuses on the contribution of resources held by others to the focal person. The other one deals with a public-good aspect of social capital, which unveils the role of social capital in the development of a community. Apparently, the private-good approach to social capital may build on the tradition of liberalism. To the extent that social capital is treated as being instrumental to the self-interest of the individual, such an interpretation is unavoidable. However, the embeddedness hypothesis that umbrellas studies on social capital clearly acknowledges that the unlimited choice of the individual is not feasible in a given community and that if possible, such choice may obliterate the sociality of the individual, an stable aspect of human being. In this regard, irrespective of a private-good or public-good approach, studies on social capital are inherently based on a single paradigm (i.e., communitarianism).
Our second topic is corporate governance. Again, two competing views are available. One is summarized as agency theory, which follows the tradition of liberalism and states that salaried managers seek to maximize their self-interests, which may not be always aligned with those of shareholders. Studies opting for agency study focus on the design of corporate governance, which protects the interests of shareholders from salaried managers’ opportunistic behavior. The following variables are suggested as the determinants of effective corporate governance: The proportion of outside directors, the separation of CEO from the chairperson of the board, and the bond between CEO and the board. Yet, the findings in this field concerning the design of corporate governance have been still inconclusive. If this is the case, then we do not know whether the ‘agency theory’-based corporate governance may improve the performance of the firm or shareholders’ value. The other is stewardship theory, which goes along with communitarianism and emphasizes that the cooperative, trust-based relationship between the board and the CEO should contribute to the performance of the firm and that the board should function as a mentor for the CEO rather than her monitor. One important suggestion for the design of governance, along this line, is the provision of non-monetary incentives because a sole reliance upon monetary incentives undermines the quality of relationships between the CEO and the board. Yet, one important downside of stewardship theory is the lack of rigorous empirical research, which is followed by the content of the theory that is not fully elaborated.
In the case of HRM, among various possible HRM systems, both market-like employment relationships and high-commitment HRM are well mapped into liberalism and communitarianism. The market-like employment relationships are characterized by such attributes as insecure employment, emphasis of recruiting talents, limited training and development, and individual performance-based compensation. Human resources in this regard are readily outsourced when their contributions to firm performance are below what the firm expects from them. In contrast, high-commitment HRM includes such policies as employment security, selective hiring based on organizational fit, extensive training and development, and incentives for team and organizational performance. As is typical of communitarianism, this system embraces the following design principles: The balance between individuality and sociality, symbolic egalitarianism, and the principle of equal sacrifice.
Our final topic is the theory of the firm. The liberal theory of the firm is one that resolves the problem of coordinating economic exchange among individuals by using ‘contract’ voluntarily signed by independent individuals. This theory includes transaction cost economics, property right theory, and contract theory. In comparison, a communitarian theory of the firm views the firm as a social institution that resolves the problem of coordination among individuals by using non-contractual methods. Along this line, the theory suggests the existence of the firm to reside in social identity shared by individuals of a community, which facilitates the process of accumulating and sharing individual knowledge within a given boundary of the community (i.e., the firm). To sum up, the liberal theory of the firm emphasizes the superiority of the contract for the resolution of conflicts among independent individuals, whereas the communitarian theory of the firm highlights the role of shared social identity that arises from on-going relationships among individuals.
In sum, by uncovering explicitly a paradigmatic basis of each research, we seek to reveal theoretical similarities or commonalities among various studies that obstruct productive debate among scholars, thus opening a new avenue for theoretical development in the management field. In doing so, we observe that a dominant theoretical framework in the field such as agency theory and transaction cost economics may not stand as the best and sole perspective, but represents a single paradigm among multiple, competing ones.
