Paradox Management Research Articles

The brand core and its management over time

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the brand core and its management over time. The aim is to develop a framework for managing the core of a brand for continuity and change. Design/methodology/approach – A longitudinal case study of the Volvo brand’s core and its management serves as the empirical basis for a qualitative analysis of the “brand core” using rhetorical perspectives. Findings – The management of the brand core for both continuity and change is an unsolved paradox in strategic brand management literature and practice. Existing conceptualisations offer little or no guidance regarding managing a brand’s core over time. The Volvo brand has evolved by adding and shifting mindsets, which has kept its core surprisingly stable. Research limitations/implications – The new framework mitigates a paradox and, by defining the brand core as a point of reference, allows for brand management to address both continuity and change and consider a range of stakeholders while doing so. The integration ofs rhetoric into the framework makes it applicable to product, service and corporate brands, or indeed anything that can be considered a “brand”. The brand core is defined as “an entity of core values and a promise”. Practical implications – By shifting perspectives on a brand’s core over time, change and development are stimulated while preserving its inner values and promise. Originality/value – The brand core framework integrating rhetoric theory was supported by a longitudinal case study to resolve a strategic brand management paradox.

Global implications of the indigenous epistemological system from the east

Purpose– The author argues and explains that the indigenous Eastern epistemological system of Yin-Yang balancing should be taken as a novel system or frame of thinking, which is deeply rooted in the indigenous Eastern culture traditions, but it has significant global implications, especially in the domain of paradox management. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a detailed elaboration of the indigenous Eastern epistemological system of Yin-Yang balancing in contrast to the Western logic systems; and second, to provide a roadmap for applying the system of Yin-Yang balancing to complex issues in the area of management, in general, and paradoxical issues, in particular.Design/methodology/approach– This is a conceptual paper with a focus on theory-building.Findings– The author elaborates on the indigenous features of Yin-Yang balancing, in contrast to Aristotle’s formal logic and Hegel’s dialectical logic in the West, to further explore the former’s global implications for the increased attention to research on paradox management. In particular, the author posits that Yin-Yang balancing appears to be better suited for paradox management than the more commonly used logics available in the Western literature. Built upon the Yin-Yang balancing, a practical tool of Duality Map for paradox management is proposed.Research limitations/implications– The system of Yin-Yang balancing proposed in this paper has the potential to embrace logical systems available in the West into a geocentric (East-meeting-West) meta-system. This paper further shows how to apply Yin-Yang balancing with the tool of Duality Map to the most salient paradoxes in the domain of management, including value-profit balance (triple bottom lines), exploration-exploitation balance (ambidexterity), cooperation-competition balance (co-opetition), globalization-localization balance (glocalization), institution-agency balance (institutional entrepreneurship), simultaneously positive and negative attitudes toward an entity (ambivalence), and etic-emic balance (geocentric) across all domains of management research.Originality/value– The primary challenge for management researchers is to find a way to achieve a geocentric integration between the West and the East at the fundamental level of philosophy. The hope is that the philosophical traditions in the East will facilitate such integration. In particular, the Eastern philosophy of wisdom has a unique capacity to reframe paradox from a negative problem (i.e. a problem of inconsistency to be resolved by dualism in terms of separating opposite elements) to a positive solution (i.e. a solution of completeness or holism to be achieved by duality in terms of partially separating and partially integrating opposite elements).

Punishment Paradox in Management

Previous research shows that rewards are often more effective at motivating people to change their behavior than punishments, and suggests that people tend to overuse punishment. Our analysis highl...

Paradoxes and cultural challenges: case of Moroccan manager returnees and comparison with Chinese returnees

This paper aims to study the phenomenon of cultural adaptation in management practices among managers who studied abroad and came back to their country of origin. It will analyse, in the Moroccan context, if managers suffer from local business practices. This paper will shed light on what managers have done in terms of behaviour, strategy and key factors of success to overcome cultural gaps. These Moroccan managers, well-educated and steeped in western culture, find themselves out of line from the way local organisations are managed. The paper will point out three major management paradoxes. A comparison with Chinese returnees will show to what extend both phenomenon are close and how managers adapted their leadership style regardless of the cultural differences between countries. This research aims to answer the following question: Why do traditional managerial concepts taught in western universities may not work as expected in a different cultural context?

Smart Development of Organizational Trust: Dilemmas and Paradoxes

This paper discusses the “smart” development of organizational trust, which is based on the recognition of the complexity of social organizational environment, its non-linearity and inherent tensions. The development of trust can be regarded from four different perspectives: puzzle, dilemma, trade-off and paradox. The tensions surrounding the development of organizational trust can be addressed based on three different ways of thinking stemming from the key streams of moral philosophy: ends-based thinking or utilitarianism (“do whatever produces the greatest good for the greatest number”), rule-based or deontological thinking (“follow the principle that you want everyone else to follow”) and care-based thinking (“do to others what you would like them to do to you”). The paper claims that “smart” development of organizational trust should undertake the paradox management perspective and be based on the combination of rule- and care-based thinking.

The Paradox of Diversity Initiatives: When Organizational Needs Differ from Employee Preferences

Women are underrepresented in the upper echelons of management in most countries. Despite the effectiveness of identity conscious initiatives for increasing the proportion of women, many organizations have been reluctant to implement such initiatives because potential employees may perceive them negatively. Given the increasing competition for labor, attracting talent is relevant for the long-term success of organizations. In this study, we used an experimental design (N = 693) to examine the effects of identity blind and identity conscious gender diversity initiatives on people’s pursuit intentions toward organizations using them. We used counterfactual thinking, derived from fairness theory, as a guiding framework for our hypothesis development and investigated the moderating influence of a forthcoming government-mandated gender quota as well as individual characteristics (e.g., gender). Participants reviewed statements regarding workplace diversity initiatives and rated either the initiatives’ effectiveness or indicated their intentions to pursue employment with organizations using them. Of those rating pursuit intentions, half were informed that the country in which they were conducting their job search was about to implement gender quotas. Results indicated a diversity management paradox such that initiatives perceived as more effective made organizations using them less attractive as employers. However, these negative perceptions were mitigated by a government-mandated quota, and also lower among women. Implications for the study and practice of diversity are discussed.

The paradox of inclusion and exclusion in membership associations

We use interviews and a focus group with leaders of a sample of nonprofit professional and trade membership associations based in the United States to understand what the leaders recognize to be their membership association’s diversity challenges and initiatives. We identify incentives, identity and power challenges as fundamental influences on the diversity of potential and existing members. Our analysis reveals a paradox in which attempts to increase the association’s inclusiveness are met with countervailing desires to maintain the membership association’s exclusiveness. We find that leaders may attempt to manage the paradox through strategies that legitimize diversity initiatives, change the membership association’s identity to reflect the valuing of diversity, and take advantage of organizational structures to embed diversity-related practices and accountability. These strategies have been discussed in the diversity management literature but without our paradox perspective. Additionally, paradox literature emphasizes the importance of ambidextrous (‘both/and’) approaches to paradox management, but these strategies may reflect an ‘either/or’ approach as leaders push their agenda forward, potentially in direct conflict with the desires of some current members.

Ambidexterity for Corporate Social Performance

The literature on corporate social performance advocates that firms address social issues based on instrumental as well as moral rationales. While both rationales trigger initiatives to increase corporate social performance, these rest on fundamentally different and contradicting foundations. Building on the literature on organizational ambidexterity and paradox in management, we propose in this conceptual article that ambidexterity represents an important determinant of corporate social performance. We explain how firms achieve higher levels of corporate social performance through the ambidextrous ability to simultaneously pursue instrumentally and morally driven social initiatives. We distinguish between a balance dimension and a combined dimension of ambidexterity, which both enhance corporate social performance through distinct mechanisms. With the balance dimension, instrumental and moral initiatives compensate for each other – which increases the scope of corporate social performance. With the combined dimension, instrumental and moral initiatives supplement each other – which increases the scale of corporate social performance. The article identifies the most important determinants and moderators of the balance and the combined dimension to explain the conditions under which we expect firms to increase corporate social performance through ambidexterity. By focusing on the interplay and tensions between different types of social initiatives, an ambidextrous perspective contributes to a better understanding of corporate social performance. Regarding managerial practice, we highlight the role of structural and behavioral factors for achieving higher corporate social performance through the simultaneous pursuit of instrumental and moral initiatives.

Is Imitation the Best Form of Flattery? Innovation Challenges in Festivals and Events

Building on the theories developed by Hollander (idiosyncrasy credits), Inglis (typology of stardom), and Snyder (self-monitoring theory), we contrast the functions played by three types of innovation—incremental improvements, hybrid innovation, and radical innovation—and their potential impact on festival management. Elvis Presley is at the heart of the study, illustrating the unique attributes of radical innovation, a concept rarely seen in festival management. The nature of the innovation paradox in festival and event management is explored through a review of the Collingwood (Canada) Elvis Festival. This study contributes to the limited understanding of the varying approaches to innovation and their roles in festival development and management. It offers event managers a valuable alternative to the traditional incremental and radical innovation binary.

Can Employability Do the Trick? Revealing Paradoxical Tensions and Responses in the Process of Adopting Innovative Employability Enhancing Policies and Practices in Organizations

This study uses a ‘paradox lens’ to contribute to employability debates in HRM by examining the effectiveness of employability enhancing policies and practices (hereafter EP&Ps) in three case organizations. We identify three organizing paradoxes reflecting the complexities of the Dutch economic, political and socio-cultural contexts. In line with the EP&Ps' competing goals, we label these: the ‘(inverted) flexibility/commitment paradox’; ‘self-management/(human-resource) management paradox’; and the ‘sustainability/effectiveness and efficiency paradox’. We further analyse how their underlying paradoxical tensions spill over and create role-performance, belonging and learning paradoxical tensions at the micro-level and how these cumulatively impact managers' and employees' responses to EP&Ps. We then explore how HRM tries to actively go beyond ‘reinforcing paradox cycles’ by creating awareness and stimulating contextual change to foster the wider adoption of EP&Ps. In conclusion, we argue that the paradox lens can inform HRM scholars and labour market stakeholders to search for innovative ways to study and govern contemporary employability issues.

Natural disturbance impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity in temperate and boreal forests.

ABSTRACTIn many parts of the world forest disturbance regimes have intensified recently, and future climatic changes are expected to amplify this development further in the coming decades. These changes are increasingly challenging the main objectives of forest ecosystem management, which are to provide ecosystem services sustainably to society and maintain the biological diversity of forests. Yet a comprehensive understanding of how disturbances affect these primary goals of ecosystem management is still lacking. We conducted a global literature review on the impact of three of the most important disturbance agents (fire, wind, and bark beetles) on 13 different ecosystem services and three indicators of biodiversity in forests of the boreal, cool‐ and warm‐temperate biomes. Our objectives were to (i) synthesize the effect of natural disturbances on a wide range of possible objectives of forest management, and (ii) investigate standardized effect sizes of disturbance for selected indicators via a quantitative meta‐analysis. We screened a total of 1958 disturbance studies published between 1981 and 2013, and reviewed 478 in detail. We first investigated the overall effect of disturbances on individual ecosystem services and indicators of biodiversity by means of independence tests, and subsequently examined the effect size of disturbances on indicators of carbon storage and biodiversity by means of regression analysis. Additionally, we investigated the effect of commonly used approaches of disturbance management, i.e. salvage logging and prescribed burning. We found that disturbance impacts on ecosystem services are generally negative, an effect that was supported for all categories of ecosystem services, i.e. supporting, provisioning, regulating, and cultural services (P < 0.001). Indicators of biodiversity, i.e. species richness, habitat quality and diversity indices, on the other hand were found to be influenced positively by disturbance (P < 0.001). Our analyses thus reveal a ‘disturbance paradox’, documenting that disturbances can put ecosystem services at risk while simultaneously facilitating biodiversity. A detailed investigation of disturbance effect sizes on carbon storage and biodiversity further underlined these divergent effects of disturbance. While a disturbance event on average causes a decrease in total ecosystem carbon by 38.5% (standardized coefficient for stand‐replacing disturbance), it on average increases overall species richness by 35.6%. Disturbance‐management approaches such as salvage logging and prescribed burning were neither found significantly to mitigate negative effects on ecosystem services nor to enhance positive effects on biodiversity, and thus were not found to alleviate the disturbance paradox. Considering that climate change is expected to intensify natural disturbance regimes, our results indicate that biodiversity will generally benefit from such changes while a sustainable provisioning of ecosystem services might come increasingly under pressure. This underlines that disturbance risk and resilience require increased attention in ecosystem management in the future, and that new approaches to addressing the disturbance paradox in management are needed.

Resilient practices: a paradox-oriented approach for large-scale development projects

Large-scale development projects are facing a period of change. The notion of resilience has recently been attracting attention from academics and policymakers who are trying to understand how complex systems can navigate a path through such changing times. The usefulness of this concept is critically explored by focusing on the management paradoxes found in these projects. We argue that the global economic crisis once again proved that resiliently managed large-scale development projects have to balance the equally present needs for flexibility and innovation with efficiency and reliability. Projects have to embrace these paradoxes as continuous, crucial, and even productive facts of organisational life. A set of cognitive and operational indicators on different levels of scale are formulated to conduct a pilot study, and guide further empirical research.

Leveraging Global Talent: Strategic Leverage to Achieve Excellent Business Performance

The paper presents a strategic management paradox approach to achieve excellent business performance. The paradox approach believes in investing in people as the first and key strategy to sustainability which also involves the leveraging of global talent as a key tohuman capital development. A conceptual model of the investing in people as a sustainablity strategy is introduced and discussed.

Haemodynamic assessment in pregnancy and pre-eclampsia: A Guytonian approach.

Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy continue to be amongst the leading causes of maternal morbidity and mortality. There is debate about the optimal monitoring and treatment for these women, particularly in regard to circulatory and fluid management. A restrictive fluid strategy is advocated, which conflicts with the prevailing view that the circulating volume is contracted in pre-eclampsia. This belief has been erroneously reinforced by use of the central venous pressure (CVP) as a measure of the volume state. We used a Guytonian model of the circulation involving the mean systemic filling pressure (Pms) to review published data using a cohort of normal pregnant/post partum women and a pre-eclamptic cohort. The Pms is the pressure left in the circulation when the heart is stopped, arguably the true volume state measure. An analogue of the Pms (Pmsa) can be calculated using commonly measured haemodynamic variables. Our results show the Pmsa to be elevated in normal pregnancy versus post partum (10.79 vs. 9.58, a 12.6% difference) and elevated further in pre-eclamptic pregnancy (13.86, 29% higher than the normal pregnant group). There is scope to challenge the long held belief that the volume state is contracted in pre-eclampsia. This approach indicates that the maternal volume state in pre-eclampsia is often elevated. When viewed in combination with recent echocardiographic insights this model helps to explain some of the haemodynamic management paradoxes that these women present. Most importantly, it provides a sound physiological basis for the restrictive fluid strategy that is currently recommended.

Differentiating and Integrating the Eastern and Western Approaches to Paradox Management

The purpose of this symposium is twofold. First, we seek to specify the key distinctions and similarities between the Eastern and Western approaches to paradox so as to gain special insights into t...

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Objectives Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy continue to be amongst the leading causes of severe maternal morbidity and mortality, and of maternal admissions to the intensive care unit (ICU). There is debate about the optimal monitoring and treatment for these women, particularly in regard to circulatory management. A restrictive fluid strategy is widely advocated, which conflicts with the widely held belief that the circulating volume is contracted in pre-eclampsia. This belief has been erroneously reinforced by use of the central venous pressure (CVP) as a measure of the volume state. Methods The Guytonian concept of the mean systemic filling pressure (Pms) provides a solution to this paradox. The Pms is the pressure in the systemic circulation when the heart is stopped, arguably the true measure of the volume state. It is about 7 mmHg in normal non-pregnant humans [Guyton, 8th Edtn, 1991]. It is possible to measure an analogue of Pms, (Pmsa), using commonly measured circulatory variables [Parkin, 1999]. We used a Guytonian model of the circulation to review published data, using a cohort of normal pregnant/postpartum women [Clark, 1989] and a pre-eclamptic cohort [Cotton, 1988]. Results Our results show the Pmsa to be elevated in normal pregnancy versus postpartum (10.79 vs 9.58, a 12.6% difference) and elevated further in pre-eclamptic pregnancy (13.86, 29% higher than the normal pregnant group). Conclusions This approach shows that the maternal volume state in pre-eclampsia is often elevated, contrary to previous teachings. When viewed in combination with recent echocardiographic insights this model helps to explain some of the hemodynamic management paradoxes that these women present. These include the marked susceptibility to pulmonary edema seen with even minimal volume administration. Most importantly, it provides a sound physiological basis for the restrictive fluid strategy that is currently recommended. Disclosures T.M. Crozier: None. E.M. Wallace: None. G.W. Parkin: Consultant, Commercial Interest: Applied Physiology.

공교육 딜레마 해결을 위한 신교수법 설계 : 패러독스 경영 프로세스를 통한 분석

공교육 딜레마 해결을 위한 신교수법 설계 : 패러독스 경영 프로세스를 통한 분석

Adaptation Challenges in Complex Rivers Around the World: The Guadiana and the Colorado Basins

Integrated water resources management provides an often-recommended governance framework to manage water resources in a sustainable way. The application of this framework on Transboundary Rivers brings additional challenges, which can be exacerbated due to climate changes and extremes (such as droughts). These changes affect the operation of water infrastructures and will affect water management practices. Thus, the understanding and development of adaptation measures (across socio-economic, environmental and administrative systems) are critical, mainly on drought prone transboundary river basins. The paper draws on research conducted to 1) assess climatic risks in those watersheds, 2) describe the challenges in water resources management in the context of climate change, and 3) draw lessons for improving the use of research-based information. Two case studies were selected, the Colorado River Basin (North America) and the Guadiana River (Iberian Peninsula), the latter of which in the context of the five river basins shared between Portugal and Spain. Research and experience in these Basins show that several paradoxes in multistate water management and governance across borders militate against the accurate assessment of socio-economic impacts and the effective use of scientific information for meeting short-term needs in reducing longer-term vulnerabilities. Lessons drawn from both studies, but not always learned in practice, abound. These lessons include an expanded use of incentives for improving collaboration, water-use efficiency, demand management and for the development of climate services to inform water-related management as new threats arise. Recommendations are established for more effectively linking risk assessment approaches with resilience strategies that are applicable in practice and available to decision makers in a changing climate.

Transnationalisation of television programming in the Iberoamerican region

Noções como as de imperialismo cultural ou cultura global, relacionadas a supostas tendências de homogeneização da globalização cultural, pecam por desconsiderar o efeito heterogeneizador do local. Tal como a rede McDonald’s entende ser necessário oferecer hambúrgueres vegetarianos na Índia, os estudos de televisão global nos familiarizam com um mercado transnacional de formatos televisivos, no qual a homogeneização procede através da heterogeneização: isto é, através da adaptação de fórmulas de programas de acordo com os imperativos das culturas locais. Esta ação demonstra o gerenciamento de um paradoxo inerente à transnacionalização: homogeneização versus heterogeneização.

The customer relationship management paradox: Five steps to create a fairer organisation

The customer relationship management paradox: Five steps to create a fairer organisation