Managing Paradox with Visuals: Persistence and Adaptation in an Airline’s Crisis Response

Abstract

Increasing volatility and disruptions, which organizations have to respond to, can contribute to salience of paradoxical tensions. Such can be addressed in proactive or defensive ways. Despite increasing interest in sociomateriality, little is known about its role in management of paradoxes, let alone in the context of a crisis. This paper adopts a video-ethnographic approach to study a materially managed paradox in an airline setting during the COVID-19 crisis. Specifically, a year-long set of meetings was analysed with a focus on a visual artefact used for management of airline operations. Our results show how material mediation with dynamically changing visual artefact contributes to management of adaptability and persistance paradox and how the malleable nature of the visual enabled responding to the disruption, as well as maintaining ongoing operations. Our study showcases the mediation through first splitting the crisis response from continuous issues of operating an airline, and later through merging the two. This paper extends understanding on how material mediation happens as material artifacts are changed, establishing two-way relationship between the discourse and materiality governed by multiple concepts identified as capturing honing, connecting and transcending and leading to different outcomes across the time. Our findings re-emphasize the importance of considering the two-way relationship between the discourse and materiality in management of paradoxes.