The impact of organizational culture on recruitment in international companies

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if, and explain why, there is a relationship between organizational culture and recruitment. More precisely, which features of organizational culture are more important than others when recruiting for diversity? Our research is based on the assumption that the more multicultural an organizational culture is (which is often the case in international companies), the more likely it is that they emphasize diversity in their recruitment process. The study is a qualitative small-N study with an explanatory research design in which we compare the results from six different units to answer our research question. The collected data are retrieved through semi-structured interviews We chose to interview international companies located in the Kristiansand region. Our findings suggest that there is a relationship between organizational culture and recruitment. Furthermore, our findings suggest that a company’s culture may have an impact on how diversity is emphasized in the organization. Companies that are categorized with knowledge-sharing cultures seem to be more concerned with recruiting inequalities (e.g. different views and opinions), and are thereby more conscious in terms of having diversity in the organization. These companies usually have increased diversity either as a goal in their organization or as an integrated part of their strategy. Additionally, our findings show that diversity is considered an important resource, due to the fact that it may increase a company’s innovation and performance. Nevertheless, an overall comparison of our findings suggest that it is probably more common that international companies located in the Kristiansand region are less affected by diversity and could thus be better at implementing this concept in the organization. Consequently, this thesis suggest that international firms need to put diversity even higher on their agendas and implement strategies to ensure diversity in recruitment. Companies that implement such changes, will potentially have a greater ability to compete in today’s labour market.