Changing the corporate paradigm: Form the duality of individualism-collectivism to complementarism

Abstract

            There have been cries for the current dominant corporate paradigm to change, these coming from victims of the 2008 recession as well as corporate practitioners. The current paradigm centres on the cultural value set of Individualism, the opposite of which is Culturalism. However the Individualism-Collectivism duality creates an interactive dynamic that makes analyses by either view meaningless. This calls for a new Complementarist view, which should be provided by organizational theory, but there is an argument that its core is full of myth and of little value. Bandura tells us that cybernetic agency theory can take on this role. In this paper a new form of collective agency theory is outlined that is able to take the Complementarist role, and hence provide guidance for the development of a paradigm shift.