Abstract I argue that David Marsden, lauded in Employment Relations (ER) and Human Resource Management, deserves recognition as an organization theorist. Viewing his works as a unified theory, I demonstrate how his focus on the interaction between individual actions, institutions and organizational structures aligns with the fields core concerns. Further, I apply an organizational dialectics approach to his analysis of organizational tensions like managerial authority and diffusion of employment systems. This reinterpretation offers new insights into organizational structure and design and the importance of ER‐specific factors and processes in shaping them. It highlights the enduring value of Marsden's framework for understanding organizations.