and find them legitimate. But they may also develop a dislike for them, and
attempt to evade them while trying at the same time to comply with them.
This means that expressed value preferences and manifest behaviors may con-
verge and diverge. Under this tenet, the emphasis is on the complementarity, or
mutual affinity, of opposites. Here, we see dialectical theory-building at work.
This is something that business system theorists such as Whitley do not favor.
But it is inevitable once we appreciate the role of human actors.
Dialectics in actor–systems relationsThe example of Japanese workers given by Lincoln and Kalleberg (1990), and
mentioned above, illustrates the point about complementary opposites: the
Japanese do not view the company more favorably than the Americans, but
the social rules of the game load their behavioral ‘choices’ towards manifest
company loyalty, even if they hate it. Similarly, surveys tend to show that
German workers in no way attribute greater importance to the work ethic,
work discipline and the centrality of work in life; the reverse is usually true.
Yet it is a well-known cliché that Germans work hard and maintain work dis-
cipline. Is this all nonsense? Germans work comparatively few hours per year,
on average, and have fewer working years per lifetime than workers in most
other countries; this would make us believe that at least part of the cliché is
nonsense. On the other hand, company studies do show work discipline in
operation. However, its persistence is due to the construction of social rela-
tions in the workplace and the employment sphere, which is also reflected in
the ‘mental map’ of the individual of legitimate and advantageous expecta-
tions, forms of behavior and outcomes. The simple fact is that Germans tend
to hate work and yet comply with the ground rules of the workplace because
they appear legitimate. This may culminate in a love–hate relationship as a
common phenomenon. Anyone who has seen Germans work will find the
interpretation entirely plausible.
Not the mental maps of individuals, nor their values, nor the system
characteristics to which they attach themselves, nor the relations between
them can ever be free of conflict or contradictions. Conflicts and contradic-
tions, between values and between institutional arrangements, and between
values and institutions, exemplify the necessity to use a dialectical perspec-
tive. Social systems at every level are simultaneously closed, naturally evolv-
ing and open. Similarly, complete societies are even more strongly marked by
closure, natural evolution and openness, all at the same time. A dialectical
perspective emphasizes that openness goes with conflict. Together, these
account for the ever-present tendency to change and modify in ways that go
beyond the relatively stable patterns put forward in the first two tenets of
societal analysis. This transcendence (meaning going beyond the present
state and characteristics of a system) has an uncomfortable habit of blurring
unequivocal statements about stable linkages, such as expressed in Whitley’s
types and the earlier statements about relations between organization,
human resources and other factors.134 International Human Resource Management