Leadership as De-paradoxification: Leading New Drug Development Work at Three Pharmaceutical Companies

Abstract

Traditionally, the role of leadership has received little attention in the literature dealing with organizational creativity. This article describes a study of the role of leadership and its implications for organizational creativity in pharmaceutical research and new drug development. Creative work in new drug development is to a large extent riddled with a series of paradoxes and non-linear causality and thus needs to be dealt with using leadership practices which help researchers overcome what would seem to be paradoxical. The study makes use of Niklas Luhmann’s concept of de-paradoxification to examine a number of opposing objectives and concepts which influence leadership practice during creative and innovative work. De-paradoxification, in this sense, does not mean solving the perceived paradox but making it manageable. This study is based on a series of interviews concerning how managers and scientists at three pharmaceutical companies conceive of leadership in creative environments. This article pinpoints the importance as well as the influence of leadership in both R&D settings, and in creative milieus in general, concluding that leadership is important in creative settings, but that it should be practiced by other means than those used in less complex environments. Consequently, more systematic research as well as more critical evaluations of the leadership literature are needed.