Abstract
Modern societies and businesses are confronted with the complexity of diversity with immense implications for the current organizational practices. The intricacies of diversity in organizations mainly stem from state policies, organizational practices or business needs. In Pakistan, instances of violence at organizational level have serious societal repercussions. Irrespective of the form of accommodation or the violent outcome which a pluralist society may take, such societies face similar structures of conflict: the posing of a fundamental challenge to the idea of developing a homogenous society. Where societies were not homogenous, attempts were made to promote official nationalist projects by unifying culturally and ethnically diverse population. Though there cannot be a one-sizefits-all states solution to diversity, every state strives for contextual solution to face diversity. Pakistan, being dominantly a Muslim state, has religio-cultural and ethnic diversity. Minority groups have always raised their voices against their unjust treatment in the form of underrepresentation, undue share in the national economic pool and suppression of their identity by the state and organizations. This study searches the answer to this organizational challenge evolved in the last over seventy years of Pakistan’s history in different forms. The paper attempts to assess the dimensions of grievances of the diverse groups and tries to answer the question ‘why plurality has gone unmanageable in Pakistan?’ The results demonstrates that it were the high degree of centralization of authority; the adoption of Urdu as a national language; a sense of domination of the central institutions by the dominant social and ethnic groups, underrepresentation in state institutions; and controlled and radicalized society which have aggravated the position of diverse groups in Pakistan and have colossal consequences to national economy and social harmony.