Paradox Lens Research Articles

Navigating tensions in a cross‐sector social partnership: How a convener drives change for sustainability

AbstractIn this paper, we study conveners' work in establishing change towards sustainability through cross‐sector social partnerships (CSSPs). Applying a paradox lens, we offer a new perspective on tensions in CSSPs: These are not hurdles or challenges to overcome in order to reach success but endure throughout the entire CSSP process. This insight changes the role of the convener, who no longer has to overcome but has to navigate tension. We focus on two tensions related to the convener role: the convener as leader but without formal authority over CSSP‐partners and the convener as both stakeholder and (neutral) facilitator in the process. Through a case study on a CSSP in the Dutch timber sector, we explain how a convener (Forest Stewardship Council Netherlands) responded to these tensions over time. We add to literatures on CSSPs and convening by outlining the relevance of a paradox perspective in this domain.

Nested tensions and smoothing tactics: An ethnographic examination of ambidexterity in a theatre

All organisations face contradictory demands, such as exploiting existing revenue sources while exploring new opportunities. The tensions of balancing these demands are largely met by employees, yet nearly all studies focus on the managerial perspective. This article uses an ethnographic study of a UK theatre to explore the experience of employees switching between exploitation and exploration in developing a play. Adopting a paradox lens, it identifies the existence of nested tensions. The organisational level is characterised by the well-studied contradiction between exploration and exploitation. Nested within this at the project level, a series of tensions are produced around resources, power, and learning. These tensions lead to an identity-based paradox for employees. They must perform well in the project to secure their ties of belonging to the organisation, but this simultaneously distances them from established expectations, weakening their ties of belonging. The article contributes to the literature on ambidexterity by illustrating the relational and emotional challenges faced by employees balancing exploitation and exploration, identifying the nested tensions involved in delivering ambidexterity, and through illustrating how employees smooth over these tensions using humour, shared vocabulary, and self-effacing language. On this basis, it argues for a practice-based view of ambidexterity as paradox.

Cultural differences in paradoxical tensions in strategy episodes

In this conceptual paper, we ask: How does the larger cultural context influence the way that groups of managers deal with paradoxical tensions in strategy episodes? We focus on three sources of tension in the conduct and design of strategy episodes – inclusion, formality and coordination/communication. We argue that in each case, cultural influences affect the extent to which these facets of strategy episodes are dealt with using a paradox lens. Specifically, in Western cultural contexts, managers tend to have a lower proclivity for adopting a paradoxical frame resulting in a separation of tensions in strategy episodes; by contrast, managers in Eastern cultural contexts such as China more readily adopt a paradoxical frame, and embrace tensions in strategy episodes. We suggest that, over time, non-paradoxical thinking likely promotes inter-episode plurality and planned emergence, while paradoxical thinking tends to foster intra-episode plurality and emergent planning. We contribute to a deeper understanding of strategy episodes as culturally embedded practices.

Resilient HRM Responses to the Stability-Change Paradox in Growth Enterprises

Paradoxes – inherent elements of organizational life – can either disrupt or develop organizations. Some companies manage to thrive in paradoxical situations and even grow in these tensions. By adopting a paradox lens, this study explores how HR practices are applied when attending to the simultaneous demands of stability and change in organizations. Specifically, we show how managers in charge of HRM in ‘work with’ and respond to this paradox. Our study is based on 14 semi-structured research interviews of managers in charge of HRM in Finnish growth enterprises representing various industries from health care to ICT. Our results show three responses that simultaneously place weight on both poles of the stability–change paradox, namely, 1) cultural cohesiveness and individualized work, 2) personal closeness and experimental organization, and 3) rigorous recruitment and employee-driven competence development. These identified HR practices are interdependent and mutually enabling. Moreover, we introduce the concept of resilience to the study of stability, change and HRM, and suggest that resilience makes the interdependence between practices supporting both stability and change possible.

Quo vadis, paradox? Centripetal and centrifugal forces in theory development

Organizations increasingly face contradictory goals, multiple stakeholder expectations, and pluralistic missions that surface and intensify competing demands. Paradox theory offers a lens to understand and engage these tensions. Yet as research adopting a paradox lens continues to grow, scholars warn that its success could advance a dominant logic, which will ultimately hinder conceptual development and result in its downfall. We suggest that scholars can avoid this denigration by embracing theory development’s driving forces—centripetal forces that define and buffer a conceptual core and centrifugal forces aimed at challenging the core and extending its boundaries. Although these forces’ directions diverge, we depict these dual forces as paradoxical—contradictory and fundamentally interdependent. That is, we explore paradoxical forces of theory development to understand the development of paradox theory. We offer means to use, balance, and leverage these insights to help surface the black boxes in paradox research.

Managing tensions in sustainable business models: Exploring instrumental and integrative strategies

Abstract This study empirically examines tensions around business model innovations for sustainability and the strategies that organizations employ to manage these tensions. A central conjecture of the study is that in order to successfully manage sustainable business models, firms need to confront sustainability's oftentimes paradoxical tensions. The research examined 30 firms that had sought to make business model innovations for sustainability; the results suggest that one group of organizations was shy of embracing these tensions and relied primarily on an instrumental or narrow ‘business case’ approach, viewing sustainability as an “either/or” scenario. However, another group of firms was aiming to work through these tensions by utilizing more paradoxical or integrative strategies, thus aiming for a “both/and” scenario. This group found it easier to manage their sustainable business models. The results highlight how applying the lens of paradox can help organizations to make sense of the complexity of sustainability; paradoxical thinking can help to reduce tensions, ambiguity and uncertainty and improve the management of complex sustainability challenges. In addition to their practical relevance, the findings have implications for both the literature on sustainable business models and the emerging paradox perspective on corporate sustainability.

Workplace flexibility as a paradoxical phenomenon: Exploring employee experiences

How do employees of dynamic consulting firms deal with their demanding professional environment, where they must be accessible, responsive and flexible seemingly around the clock? This case study of a large consulting firm explores employee experiences of flexible working through the lens of paradox. It finds that flexible working far exceeds the set of approved flexible work arrangements and practices enshrined in formal HR policies. Rather, individuals develop varied perceptions, expectations and ways of organizing flexible working, which emerge and evolve as they accumulate experience in a context where client-focused responsiveness is key. The article argues that flexible working is part of the deeper psychological contract between professional employees and the firm. This allows us to better understand how the paradoxical tensions that characterize workplace flexibility are experienced as evolving combinations of contributions and inducements. Employees manage these tensions in different ways, including vacillating between polar opposites and integrating contradictory elements, creating an overall mental picture of their flexible working experience.

독백과 망각의 전쟁 : 중월전쟁과 아시아 냉전의 역설성

독백과 망각의 전쟁 : 중월전쟁과 아시아 냉전의 역설성

Dancing on the Razor’s Edge: How Top-Level Women Leaders Manage the Paradoxical Tensions between Agency and Communion

Research documents a heightened need for women leaders to be perceived as both agentic and communal and to deal with the incongruity between communal gender-role expectations and agentic leader-role expectations. However, paradoxical tensions exist between agency and communion because they are associated with distinct, and at times conflictual, cognition, behavior, and motivation. How women leaders manage these tensions remains under-explored. To address this gap in the literature, we conducted an inductive study based on interviews with 64 U.S. women executives from various industries. Drawing from a paradox lens, we first identified four pairs of apparently contradictory agentic and communal tendencies that are interwoven in women leaders’ narratives: demanding and caring, authoritative and participative, self-advocating and other-serving, and distant and approachable. We also identified five mechanisms through which women leaders bring together agency and communion: situational accentuating, sequencing, overlapping, complementing, and reframing. Our findings highlight the underlying mechanisms and constructive routes through which women leaders juxtapose agency and communion to cope with role incongruity. They also offer guidance to women leaders and leadership-development practitioners in expanding mental models and behavioral repertoires to deal with the challenges stemming from tensions between agency and communion.

Paradoxes in Organizational Change: The Crucial Role of Leaders’ Sensegiving

ABSTRACTIn organizational change, both leaders and followers experience paradoxical tensions, to which they often react defensively. Therefore, a paradoxical lens is valuable to understand individuals' change reactions. While there is a rich discussion in the literature about the importance of leaders’ sensemaking about and managing of paradoxes in organizational change, the follower perspective, and in particular the leaders’ influence on followers’ sensemaking about paradoxes have largely been neglected so far. To close this gap, a conceptual model is introduced that, based on uncertainty management theory, highlights the role of followers’ fairness evaluations with regard to paradoxical demands. Leaders’ sensegiving about paradoxes to followers, which is based on their own sensemaking processes and stimulates followers to engage in paradoxical sensemaking, is suggested as a crucial boundary condition for followers’ fairness evaluations and their subsequent reactions to paradoxical tensions. The model thus combines the paradox and sensemaking–sensegiving literatures with the fairness literature to understand followers’ reactions to paradoxical tensions in organizational change. In doing so, the model acknowledges the paradoxical nature of organizational change and offers a new and specific focus on how to influence individuals’ change reactions positively. Testable propositions suggest directions for future research.

The Knowing of Monstrosities: Necropower, Spectacular Punishment and Denial

This study examines how newspaper accounts of criminality conceal and illuminate particular types of monstrosity in the postbellum United States. The paper offers an analysis of Gothicism—which typically frames the criminality of marginalized groups—as a technique of racial domination in narrative sites that construct knowledge on criminality and punishment. Analysis reveals a paradoxical lens of Gothicism in which oppressive groups can conceal monstrosity within a colonial context. The analysis of gothic accounts of criminality challenges the ways in which denial shapes modern monstrosity.

Dovetailing talent management and diversity management: the exclusion-inclusion paradox

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to adopt a paradox lens for dovetailing the human resource management sub-domains of talent management (TM) and diversity management (DM), in the attempt to create closer alignment between the two. Design/methodology/approach The authors review paradox theory, TM and DM literatures and formulate a paradox that becomes apparent when considering TM and DM simultaneously. Findings The authors coin this tension as the “exclusion-inclusion paradox,” highlighting that TM and DM reflect contradictory, yet interrelated principles: organizations promote exclusion through a TM architecture that focuses on the identification and development of a few selected employees, while simultaneously, organizations promote inclusion, in the attempt to minimize existing inequalities for traditionally marginalized groups. Practical implications Once uncovered, the exclusion-inclusion paradox enables organizational actors to make choices on whether to respond actively or defensively to the paradox. The authors argue for active responses in order to work through the paradox. Originality/value This is the first paper adopting a paradox lens in order to interweave the DM literature with TM literature in the attempt to explain how DM and TM constitute contradicting yet interrelated principles.

Using paradox theory to understand responses to tensions between service and training in general surgery.

The tension between service and training in pressured health care environments can have a detrimental impact on training quality and job satisfaction. Yet the management literature proposes that competing demands are inherent in organisational settings: it is not the demands as such that lead to negative outcomes but how people and organisations react to opposing tensions. We explored how key stakeholders responded to competing service-training demands in a surgical setting that had recently gone through a highly-publicised organisational crisis. This was an explanatory case study of a general surgery unit. Public documents informed the research questions and the data were triangulated with semi-structured interviews (n = 14) with key stakeholders. Data coding and analysis were initially inductive but, after the themes emerged, we used a paradox lens to group themes into four contextual dimensions: performing, organising, belonging and learning. Tensions were apparent in the data, with managers, surgeons and trainees or residents in conflict with each other because of different goals or priorities and divergent perspectives on the same issue of balancing service and training (performing). This adversely impacted on relationships across and within groups (belonging, learning) and led to individuals prioritising their own goals rather than working for the 'greater good' (performing, belonging). Yet although relationships and communication improved, the approach to getting a better balance maintained the 'compartmentalisation' of training (organising) rather than acknowledging that training and service cannot be separated. Stakeholder responses to the tensions provided temporary relief but were unlikely to lead to real change if the tension between service and training was considered to be an interdependent and persistent paradox. Reframing the service-training paradox in this way may encourage adjusting responses to create effective working partnerships. Our findings add to the body of knowledge on this topic, and will resonate with all those engaged in surgical and other postgraduate training.

Erratum to: Managing Corporate Sustainability with a Paradoxical Lens: Lessons from Strategic Agility

Erratum to: Managing Corporate Sustainability with a Paradoxical Lens: Lessons from Strategic Agility

Pulled in Two Directions. Being in Concert a Leader to Some and a Follower to Others

Some individuals, in organizations are in a position where they need to attend in concert to their role as a leader to some, and a follower to others. It is important that they perform both roles e...

Managing Corporate Sustainability with a Paradoxical Lens: Lessons from Strategic Agility

Corporate sustainability introduces multiple tensions or paradoxes into organisations which defy traditional approaches such as trading-off contrasting options. We examine an alternative approach: to manage corporate sustainability with a paradoxical lens where contradictory elements are managed concurrently. Drawing on paradox theory, we focus on two specific pathways: to the organisation-wide acceptance of paradox and to paradoxical resolution. Introducing the concept of strategic agility, we argue that strategically agile organisations are better placed to navigate these paradox pathways. Strategic agility comprises three organisational meta-capabilities: strategic sensitivity, collective commitment, and resource fluidity. We propose that strategically agile organisations draw on strategic sensitivity and collective commitment to achieve organisation-wide acceptance of paradox, and collective commitment and resource fluidity to achieve paradoxical resolution. For each of these meta-capabilities, we identify three organisational practices and processes specifically related to corporate sustainability that organisations can leverage in pursuit of strategic agility. We offer a conceptual framework depicting the strategic agility meta-capabilities, and associated practices and processes, which organisations draw on to successfully manage corporate sustainability with a paradoxical lens.

Navigating identity duality in multinational subsidiaries: A paradox lens on identity claims at Hindustan Unilever 1959–2015

Multinational subsidiaries do not merely seek legitimacy within their dual institutional contexts; they also strive to articulate an organizational identity by drawing on institutional resources embedded in these dual contexts. We draw attention to the subsidiary’s identity duality and conceptualize it as a paradox, i.e., as the juxtaposition of the contradictory, interdependent, and persistent characteristics of the ‘global’ and the ‘local’ in the subsidiary’s identity. Using 57 years of archival data from Hindustan Unilever, the Indian subsidiary of Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever, we observe changing patterns in the articulation of identity claims by subsidiary leaders and develop a process model of how subsidiaries navigate identity duality over time. We find that subsidiary leaders may use two modes of organizational identity work for this purpose – logic ordering (the articulation of identity claims that respond to contradictory institutional demands by privileging one and subordinating the other) and logic bridging (the articulation of identity claims that respond to contradictory institutional demands by effecting a Janusian integration of the said demands). Over time, and employing these modes of identity work, leaders at Hindustan Unilever sustained a dynamic balance between the dual cores of the subsidiary’s espoused identity.

Commensurability and Incommensurability of Paradigms Among Theories and Persons

This article considers the ongoing tension of the presence of two or more seemingly incommensurable worlds that in some way might experientially coexist within the emerging individual who at once is singularly self-regulating as well as systems-contextualized and systems-organized. Can disparate orientations, profoundly discrepant worldviews, be intelligible to each other, or must they remain dissociated, each speaking indecipherable languages? Exploring these questions through the lens of experiential paradox expands upon ways of conceptualizing what it means to be an individual person and the broader developmental potentials for one’s emotional world. It is argued that our shared struggle to tolerate both seemingly incommensurable worlds—one of context-determinedness and one of independence, agency, and ownership of one’s present and future—leads to positive, developmental trajectories.

Developing Practice‐Oriented Theory on Collaboration: A Paradox Lens

Abstract Collaboration is present throughout public administration as a means to address social issues that sit in the interorganizational domain. Yet research carried out over the last three decades has concluded that collaborations are complex, slow to produce outputs, and by no means guaranteed to deliver synergies and advantage. This article explores whether a “paradox lens” can aid the development of practice‐oriented theory to help those who govern, lead, and manage collaborations in practice. It draws on a long‐standing research program on collaboration and a synthesis of relevant literature on paradox and collaboration. The article develops five propositions on the application of a paradox lens that explicitly recognizes the context of collaboration as inherently paradoxical; acknowledges the limitations of mainstream theory in capturing adequately the complex nature of and tensions embedded in collaborative contexts; and uses the principles of paradox to develop practice‐oriented theory on governing, leading, and managing collaborations.

The Interplay between Intuition and Rationality in Strategic Decision Making: A Paradox Perspective

Both intuition and rationality can play important roles in strategic decision making. However, a framework that specifically accounts for the interplay between intuition and rationality is still missing. This study addresses this gap by using a paradox lens and conceptualizes the intuition–rationality duality as a paradoxical tension. We draw on seven case studies of innovation projects to empirically derive a three-step process for managing this intuition–rationality tension through paradoxical thinking. Our empirical data suggest that management of the tension starts with preparing the ground for paradoxical thinking by creating managerial acceptance for the contradictory elements of rational and intuitive approaches to decision making. The process then continues by developing decision-making outcomes through the integration of intuitive and rational practices. Finally, the outcomes of paradoxical thinking are embedded into the organizational context. For each step of the model, we indicate a set of practices that, by leveraging intuitive or rational characteristics of decision making, practitioners can use to deal with this cognitive tension in the different steps of our model.