Paradoxical View Research Articles

Employers' paradoxical views about temporary foreign migrant workers' health: a qualitative study in rural farms in southern Ontario.

BackgroundThe province of Ontario hosts nearly a half of Canada’s temporary foreign migrant farm workers (MFWs). Despite the essential role played by MFWs in the economic prosperity of the region, a growing body of research suggests that the workers’ occupational safety and health are substandard, and often neglected by employers. This study thus explores farm owners’ perceptions about MFWs occupational safety and general health, and their attitudes towards health promotion for their employees.MethodsUsing modified grounded theory approach, we collected data through in-depth individual interviews with farm owners employing MFWs in southern Ontario, Canada. Data were analyzed following three steps (open, axial, and selective coding) to identify thematic patterns and relationships. Nine employers or their representatives were interviewed.ResultsFour major overarching categories were identified: employers’ dependence on MFWs; their fragmented view of occupational safety and health; their blurring of the boundaries between the work and personal lives of the MFWs on their farms; and their reluctance to implement health promotion programs. The interaction of these categories suggests the complex social processes through which employers come to hold these paradoxical attitudes towards workers’ safety and health. There is a fundamental contradiction between what employers considered public versus personal. Despite employers’ preference to separate MFWs’ workplace safety from personal health issues, due to the fact that workers live within their employers' property, workers' private life becomes public making their personal health a business-related concern. Farmers’ conflicting views, combined with a lack of support from governing bodies, hold back timely implementation of health promotion activities in the workplace.ConclusionsIn order to address the needs of MFWs in a more integrated manner, an ecological view of health, which includes the social and psychological determinants of health, by employers is necessary. Employers and other stakeholders should work collaboratively to find a common ground, harnessing expertise and resources to develop more community-based approaches. Further research and continuous dialogue are needed.

Paradoxical Leadership and the Competing Values Framework

The development and enactment of leadership involves paradoxical tensions. Cultural and organizational forces increasingly reflect an awareness of paradox. Leadership is correspondingly understood as having paradoxical aspects. I address the relationship between leadership and paradox and explore the utility of the competing values framework as a means to develop leadership skill from a paradox perspective. The competing values framework can support the development of a more paradoxical view of leadership that encourages greater leader behavioral and cognitive complexity as well as increased leader flexibility. Furthermore, the capacities of awareness, exploration, and interpretation are identified as possible resources to advance paradoxical conceptualizations of leadership.

Un muro, inusual imagen religiosa. El vocablo "bhitti" en Abhinavagupta

This paper discusses the meaning of an image rarely used within the religious and philosophical corpus of ancient India in order to describe the ultimate nature of God and the human being: a wall or canvas (Sanskrit, bhitti). The usage of such a peculiar image belongs to Abhinavagupta, the great exegete of the Tantric tradition who lived in Kashmir between the tenth and eleventh centuries A.D. After presenting some antecedents, the paper focuses on key passages taken fromAbhinavagupta’s work and shows how, far from being secondary, the image of a wall possesses a remarkable consistency and expressive power in accordance withAbhinavagupta’s doctrinal presuppositions, in particular his commitment to a dynamic and ultimately paradoxical view of the divine realm, the universe and salvation.

Pedagogic challenges in the learning organization

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to further clarify a conceptual understanding of pedagogic challenges in the learning organization and to propose a model for pedagogic interventions to facilitate organizational learning and managing tacit knowledge.Design/methodology/approach– The “organization pedagogic” approach includes analysis of, and interventions in, learning processes in local school organizations' quality development. The empirical study focuses particularly on identified contradictions and challenges regarding organizational learning. Through a multi-case study design, 39 in-depth interviews with head teachers and teachers were carried out. A qualitative thematic analysis was conducted.Findings– Observed obstacles regarding collective learning processes in the local school organizations mirrored underlying contradictions. These contradictions manifest as dilemmas concerning inconsistent and implicit quality analyses and assessments, as conflicting views regarding collaboration and interpretations of teacher’s role and as paradoxical views on managing processes regarding quality work.Originality/value– A conclusion is that dilemmas and paradoxes, more than conflicting views, are difficult to conceptualize and make explicit to create shared knowledge. This means that contradictions remain as underlying tensions in the organization and decrease the potential of both team learning and organizational learning. Therefore, a pedagogic intervention loop model is suggested, aiming at facilitating ongoing collective learning processes and managing tacit knowledge.

Paradoxical Leadership and the Competing Values Framework

The development and enactment of leadership involves paradoxical tensions. Conceptualizations of leadership, influenced by cultural and organizational forces, increasingly indicate an awareness of paradox. I address the interrelationship between paradox and leadership and explore the utility of the competing values framework (CVF) as a means to develop leadership skill from a paradox perspective. I identify means by which the competing values framework can support the development of a more paradoxical view of leadership that encourages greater leader behavioral and cognitive complexity and greater flexibility. I conclude by noting that the capacities of awareness, exploration, and interpretation can support further development of paradoxical leadership.

Necessary fiction: Realism’s tragic theology

This article revisits the early realist understanding of tragedy in international relations in order to highlight its debt to continental philosophical thought and tragic theology. Far from sharing a view of tragedy as objective externality, early realists engaged with the existential conditions that make up the paradoxical structure of experience: human beings’ constant albeit frustrated striving to make the world intelligible and ascribe meaning to their actions. The upshot of this article is that early classical realists, such as Hans Morgenthau and Reinhold Niebuhr, entertained a view of tragedy as a necessary fiction, that is, a fabricated but real condition that is inextricably linked with the constitution of subjectivity and human agency. This paradoxical view of tragedy as an ‘enabling obstacle’ that contests the idea of tragic destiny as inescapable determinism finds its roots in the continental philosophical and theological background of their thought but is more consistently exhibited in Niebuhr’s theological anthropology.

Jerk: A Tic-Inspired View of the Self-Determination Paradox in Our Mental Health System

Historically, the mental health field has been dominated by the medical model, placing the “patient” into the backseat of their own treatment. Sometimes this aspect of being controlled can be as hurtful as the out-of-control experience individuals with mental health conditions often face. In recent years, a number of people with mental health conditions have stepped up, showing not only that they can recover but also that they can lead the way in recovery-oriented mental health services. This article provides a commentary on this form of input that is rooted in the author's personal experiences with the system of care.

Providing Mother’s Own Milk in the Context of the NICU

Mothers of very preterm infants continue to face challenges related to providing their expressed breast milk in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). This qualitative study sought to understand the experience of mothers of hospitalized very preterm infants related to their daily pumping routine during the NICU stay. Fourteen women who were pumping breast milk for their hospitalized infants were interviewed. Sequential, semistructured, audiotaped individual interviews were conducted at 2 different time points: within 2 weeks following delivery when the mothers were pumping only, and 4 to 6 weeks once breastfeeding had been initiated. The central themes found were: becoming a "mother-interrupted" and negotiating a paradoxical experience of separation and connection. Unique to these findings were the paradoxical view of the pump as both a wedge and a link to their infants, the intense dislike the mothers had for the tasks required to provide their expressed breast milk, and diversionary tactics used during pumping sessions. The complexity of thoughts, actions, and behaviors revealed in the mothers' narrative accounts provides a guide to direct future breastfeeding interventions and management.

Success or sorrow: the paradoxical view of crime control campaigns in China

Since Deng Xiaoping introduced a market economy in the mid-1970s, China has achieved great progress and its citizens have greater incomes. Yet, current research documents an increase in organized crime and corruption in China. The focus of this research is on the use of the “strike hard” crime campaigns (yanda and da hei in Mandarin) against organized criminals and economic corruption in China. Crime control campaigns are ongoing and are widely criticized for abuses of power. One of the most frequently mentioned examples of the official abuse of authority is the da hei (strike black) campaign, instigated by former Chongqing mayor and prominent politician Bo Xilai. In 2012, Bo Xilai was detained in a political scandal that continues to engulf Chinese politics. This article discusses whether increasing crime and corruption, growing prosperity, internal migration of rural migrants, and modernization can be viewed as factors that support the use of crime control campaigns. The Chinese view disorder as a threat to stability. This article examines how yanda or strike hard campaigns are used as China contends with threats to its social order.

“You are no stranger to me”

“You are no stranger to me”

Sustainable development: paradoxes, misunderstandings and learning organizations

PurposeSustainability is, in itself, the idea of a harmonic answer to the dual nature of the most pressing problem for global society. Most of the problems dealing with sustainability concern its dual and contradictory nature. That paradoxical reality is in no way a unique feature of sustainability; its universal pervasiveness is demonstrated by the attention that Western and Eastern philosophies have given to it. This paper seeks to describe paradoxes that arise in managerial and organizational learning processes and proposes a taxonomy. It pays special attention to the central paradox of “complexifying” and to reductionism‐holism in science.Design/methodology/approachThe work is based on the theories of organizational learning and managerial cybernetics, under the paradox view of management.FindingsThe study shows the relevance of the paradox view to management understanding of the complexity of sustainability, its controversial nature; and how the latter relates to epistemology and to the complementarity of analytical and synthetics methods in research and science. It also demonstrates that, at organizational levels, harnessing tensions that emerge from natural paradoxical situations enhances sustainable oriented decision‐making.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper builds a bridge toward scientific communities that, working on sustainability and/or complexity, are unaware of the important contribution of cybernetics, especially Ashby's work and the VSM's relevance to the examination of complex societal issues.Practical implicationsThe paper provides a platform to enquire on the implications of societal learning on sustainability, and on de facto global digital networks emerging from over ideologized constituents that, in the name of the greenness of the environment and of a just society, fail to see how rapidly global society is positively changing after the dark years of the Cold War.Originality/valueThe paper reviews current developments on the paradox view of management, and proposes a taxonomy of paradoxes based on managerial cybernetics and organizational learning.

The importance of organizational learning for organizational sustainability

PurposeThis Special Issue is intended to heighten awareness of the importance of organizational learning in addressing the demands of organizational sustainability, and in particular triple bottom line (TBL) sustainability. A definition of TBL sustainability is provided, together with an exploration of the practical issues relevant to adopting organizational learning in addressing it. By exploring research and practitioner viewpoints bearing on sustainability‐related applications of organizational learning, this Special Issue aims to help organizations remove barriers to achieving sustainability goals and catalyze the progress for an organization on its sustainability journey.Design/methodology/approachGeneral sustainability‐related concerns and challenges associated with organizational learning are reviewed, and individual authors voice their understanding of the application of organizational leaning to particular aspects of sustainability based on their research, their case studies, and the extant literature.FindingsFindings include enhanced understanding of the incompatibility of single‐ and double loop learning in TBL sustainability contexts, and the required emphasis on double‐loop learning to progress sustainability aims successfully. The effectiveness of dialogic interaction is described in achieving a transition towards sustainability in people, organizations and society as a whole. How individual worldviews called “our ecological selves” allow creation of the conditions for confronting global environmental challenges is explained. Contributions are made to the understanding of hybrid organizations through the case of a Brazilian networked organization, and a paradox view of management based on the theories of organizational learning and managerial cybernetics is applied to enlighten the understanding of sustainability. The learning and adaptive system of the US commercial aviation industry is explored and the application of such a system in an organization operating according to triple bottom line sustainability principles is described.Originality/valueThe opinions and research presented provide new and unique understanding of how organizational learning may contribute to organizational sustainability. Further value is added via the assessment of means to progress the sustainability ideal, the identification of barriers, and the many practical examples of means to facilitate progress toward that ideal.

A closer look at effects of martial arts involvement among youth

The involvement of youth in martial arts is often described in controversial terms. While it has been associated with negative effects to personal and social well-being (in terms of aggressive and violent behaviour), there is also a belief that martial arts practice among youngsters can lead to positive socio-psychological outcomes. To date, research has not provided conclusive evidence that negative outcomes of martial arts involvement can be ruled out, nor has it produced convincing evidence to unconditionally support the positive effects. Based on the fact that contextual factors can be expected to have an impact on martial arts participation among youth, the present paper tries to emphasise the need for a discerned view of the paradox that seems to exist with regard to perceived or proclaimed effects of youth’s involvement.

Tourism to religious sites, case studies from Hungary and England: exploring paradoxical views on tourism, commodification and cost-benefits

The application of systems theory to tourism development has a pedigree that has largely been derived from econometrics and macro-economic theory (Baggio et al., 2010; Franch et al., 2010; Choi and Sirakaya, 2006; Schianetz and Kavanagh, 2007, 2008; Dwyer et al., 2010). This paper identifi es opportunities and some barriers to developing sites of religious worship for tourism to maximise income and engage appropriate resources allocation strategies. The authors have investigated tourism development that is sympathetic to sacred purposes at these sites over several years. Religious sites are now acknowledging that homogeneous supply responses may no longer be appropriate. Each special site demands a heterogeneous response of site guardians to changeable demand and careful evaluation of how to maximise income generated from very limited resources. This necessitates improved skills in guardians to build appropriate point of sale products and services that fi t with consumption expectations and are congruent with sacred purpose.

The Bottom-up Move within Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development: A Pedagogical Application for Teaching Agreement in Spanish as a Foreign Language

This paper presents the findings of a longitudinal study in which two instructional methods to teach agreement features to first-year university students specializing in Spanish in Japan are compared. On the one hand, the control group was exposed to the traditional top-down teaching of agreement paradigms and were instructed to practice them through pattern repetition. On the other, a bottom-up move informed by Vygotsky and Gal’perin’s theories of conceptual formation was induced in the experimental group by using schemata and verbalization during the task of using agreement features. The data suggest that (a) the material expression of conceptual relationships (e.g. through schemata) and (b) the verbal rendition of rules or conceptual connections, and (c) the overall framing of the task as a bottom-up move actually helped acquirers in their mastery of gender and number agreement. The results of the intervention also support Kim and Kellogg (2006) and Centeno-Cortés and Jiménez Jiménez’s (2004) paradoxical view that L1 conceptual elaboration and organization aimed at solving L2 language tasks plays an important role in L2 acquisition. The data seem to indicate that there is room for encouraging learners’ hypothesis-making in the L1 under certain conditions, such as the kind of guided induction designed for this research and the one advanced by Herron and Tomasello (1992), and Tomasello and Herron’s (1988a, 1988b). L2 native instructors who dismiss or suppress acquirers’ talk in their L1 in their communication classes should assess if that talk is part of an important process of hypothesis-making or verbalization of language rules or not and act accordingly. L1 exchanges linked to hypothesis-making or task organization seem to foster L2 development and therefore should not be treated like a waste of time by ‘Communication’ instructors. In sum, the bottom-up move within Vygotsky’s ZPD is suggested as a feasible, although more elaborate intervention, as the findings on the intervention suggest.

The effect of nonhuman’s external regulation on children’s responses to detect children with developmental problems (DP) associated with the natural development of self-regulation during learning tasks

The present study sought to examine the effect of the nonhuman’s external regulation on children’s responses during learning tasks to detect children with developmental problems (DP) associated with the natural development process of self-regulation. The material was an isolated, computer-based learning system that acts as a standalone learning environment and used by 100 preschool children, which were randomly selected from ten preschools without revising their medical files. Participants were classified by the system itself during learning progression in three essential groups based on Aginian’s zone of children regulation (ZCR), which is “the equilibrium point in the self-regulation’s development process that controls the child to be either a self-Vygotskyian’s learner, self-Piagetian’s learner, or self-Aginian’s learner during learning tasks” ( Agina, Kommers, & Steehouder, 2011d). The results showed that the preschool children can spontaneously do diagnostic tests during learning tasks and the nonhuman external regulator was able to analysis children’s responses that, in turn, used for detecting those children with DP. This result was practically confirmed by revising all children’s medical files that matched the final judgment of the nonhuman external regulator. However, the results confirmed that the natural development of self-regulation was fluctuated among three paradoxical views (Vygotskyian vs. Piagetian vs. Aginian).

On Not Being Found: A Winnicottian Reading of John Banville's Ghosts and Athena

On Not Being Found:A Winnicottian Reading of John Banville's Ghosts and Athena Mark O'Connell One of the more striking aspects of the work of the Irish novelist John Banville is its unflagging fascination with postures and impostures. Almost all of his protagonists are performers of roles, men who are constantly arranging themselves in some or other type of pose. Peopled as it is with frauds and masqueraders, his work might productively be viewed as a sustained exploration of the various ways people find of deceiving themselves and others, as a fiction about the fictions people make of themselves. Unsurprisingly, much of the critical response to the novels has focused on their engagement with problematic questions of selfhood and authenticity. The notion of the divided self has, in particular, proven an enduring point of interest. Hedwig Schwall, for instance, has described the oeuvre as "one big enterprise to deconstruct the illusion of (id)entity." "Each of the author's 'in-dividuals,'" she writes, "are utterly dividual, their split is their essence" (120). Brendan McNamee has linked the inauthenticity of Banville's protagonists with both their self-obsession and their self-division, arguing that the three are inseparable. At the heart of the question of authenticity, he argues, lies "the dilemma of self division." "Self-obsession goes hand-in-hand with self-division: a self looking, a self being looked at" (76). And John Kenny makes a similar point when he writes that Banville's narrators all suffer from an "excessive self-awareness" that "brings with it a sense of doubtful self-identity, suspect authenticity, and an agonized yearning for a sublimely idealized, preconscious, and therefore innocent, self" (170). Critics have tended to view the creation of narrative as offering a form of resolution to this problem of self-division, albeit an incomplete and problematic [End Page 328] one. Elke D'hoker sees Banville's narrators' first-person accounts as not just representative, but constitutive of selfhood. These "never fully reliable first-person narrators," she writes, "can be observed in the process of representing their traumatic past, their tormented thoughts and divided selves in a coherent narrative so as to achieve a sense of self that is unitary, solid and clear" (2). The mode of first-person narrative, she claims, "seems to offer the possibility of meaning and control not available in real life" (173). Likewise, Derek Hand refers to the narrators' "search for an appropriate language that will contain their experience, and render themselves and their lives knowable" (165). Schwall, too, agrees that all of these "cleft protagonists...perform their quest for self through writing" (116). If it is striking just how much of the critical work on Banville's fiction has focused on issues of selfhood, authenticity, and self-creation through narrative, what is perhaps equally notable is how infrequently (and, on the whole, fleetingly) the theories of psychoanalysis have been employed as a means of investigating these complexities. This, I would argue, constitutes a shortcoming in the criticism on a body of work that is so resolutely interior, so unswervingly concerned with the inscrutable forces and afflictions of personhood, with how the self is never at one with itself. If psychoanalysis could be said to have a single identifiable aim, it would be the scrutiny of peoples' narratives of selfhood, the exposure of their inventions and misconceptions about themselves. In its resolute interiority, in its repeated use of the confessional monologic form, and in its concern with the self and its troubled relationship to others, Banville's work is peculiarly suited to a psychoanalytic critical approach. In the present essay, I depart from the body of criticism sketched above in two fundamental respects: I present the self-division and fraudulence of Banville's narrators as resulting from an elemental fear of connection and communication, and I analyze the fictions they narrate from a psychoanalytic perspective. I argue that the theories of the British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, in particular his notions of the True and False Self, are especially useful in illuminating Banville's complex—and, as we shall see, frequently paradoxical—view of the self and its interactions with the world. My focus here is primarily...

Image inversion and digital mirror-image technology aid laparoscopic surgery task performance in the paradoxical view: a randomized controlled trial

As laparoscopic surgical procedures increase in complexity, surgeons may find themselves with the laparoscope opposite to their laparoscopic instruments, thus creating the paradoxical viewpoint. We assessed whether surgical task performance in the paradoxical viewpoint would be improved by digitally altering the image or by changing the camera orientation. Sixty-one laparoscopically naïve operators performed a Peg Transfer task using a trainer box. In the first "round," naïve operators were block-randomized to perform the Peg-Transfer task either in the standard view or the paradoxical view. In the second "round," naïve operators were positioned in the paradoxical view and block-randomized to having the monitor image as paradoxical (n = 19) or altered by being digitally flipped (mirror-image) (n = 22) or inverted (n = 20). The task consisted of transferring six plastic objects in 5 min (300 s). Scoring was based on the formula of total time = time to completion (max = 300 s) + penalty time (50 s/peg not transferred). In the first round, average total time to perform the Peg Transfer task using the standard view was 215 ± 20 s, which was significantly less (P < 0.001) than the 563 ± 13 s for the paradoxical view. In the second round (with all naïve operators in the paradoxical viewpoint), the total time for the paradoxical image, digitally flipped image (mirror-image), and inverted image were 561 ± 12, 449 ± 25, and 259 ± 37 s, respectively. The total time for the inverted image was significantly less than both the paradoxical image and digitally flipped image (P < 0.001). The total time for the digitally flipped image was also less than paradoxical image (P < 0.05). The group with the paradoxical image completed 0.8 ± 0.2 peg transfers, which was less than both the digitally flipped and inverted-view groups (P < 0.05). This is the first study to demonstrate that when in the paradoxical viewpoint, altering the image on the video monitor, either by digitally flipping or inverting the image, can improve surgical task performance.

The European eel—the swim bladder–nematode system provides a new view of the invasion paradox

It is widely assumed that the likelihood of invasion decreases with increased species richness in the recipient community. However, the invasion paradox supports a negative and a positive relationship between native biodiversity and the success of an invader. Here, we show that for a host-parasite system (Anguilla anguilla as host and Anguillicoloides crassus as parasitic invader), invasion increases with native micro- and macroparasitic species richness. In fact, about 30% of the A. crassus intensity in eels could be explained by the number of both micro- and macroparasite species. This pattern could be due to the fact that A. crassus exploits a niche (the swim bladder) that is unoccupied by native parasite species and by the Th1/Th2 trade-off between native microparasites and the invader. We conclude that the host-parasite system resistance to invasion may depend on both niche availability and the Th1/Th2 trade-off. As well, we encourage researchers to incorporate native parasite richness as a risk factor in epidemiological models of A. crassus.

The Reluctant Pirate: Godwin, Justice, and Property

In its brief, yet dramatic, moment in time (in Britain in the 1790s), William Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice enjoyed considerable fame and, indeed, notoriety. While probably best remembered now for its utopian and anarchistic moments, as well as its anticipations of utilitarianism, for a "radical" text Political Justice draws some at first sight puzzlingly conservative political conclusions. In this paper, I explore this apparent conservatism through Godwin's paradoxical views on property, arguing that in the end, and perhaps under the duress of an increasingly polarized political climate, he was unable to reconcile his politics with his philosophy.