Paradoxical Tensions in Diversity Management: Stakeholder Perspectives and Coping Strategies

Abstract

Recent scholarship on organizational paradox has highlighted that the effects of paradox on organizational success are highly dependent on the ways in which the underlying tensions are constructed and acted upon by organizational actors. Hence this paper examines systematically how the internal and external stakeholders of an organization deal with the tensions surrounding one particular paradox, that of combining social and economic objectives in a diversity policy. It emerges from our data that stakeholders perceive of paradoxical tensions in a nested fashion: some only see one category of tensions, while others perceive a much wider range. Engagement with paradoxical tensions also seems to go through a U- shaped curve: stakeholders who are little or very much involved with the diversity policy look more to acceptance strategies, whereas those with a medium level of engagement are more likely to use a resolution strategy. Furthermore, we identified seemingly novel acceptance strategies from the data that operate not at the level of an individual stakeholder but at the collective level.