On the emergence and management of paradoxical tensions: The case of architectural firms

Paradoxical tensions are pervasive and unavoidable in the everyday practice of creativity-based contexts, such as architectural firms. Whilst the existing literature has extensively explored both coping strategies and multiple ways of approaching paradoxical tensions, we still have a limited understanding of how individuals engage with paradoxical tensions and how organizations support their members' efforts to sustain such tensions. Accordingly, my purpose here is to explore paradoxical tensions in the context of architectural firms and explain how firms and their members make sense of these tensions. I use a multiple case study to investigate empirically the salient paradoxical tensions central to architectural firms and to develop an understanding of what makes them salient. I explain how triggers evoke latent tensions and make them salient and also outline salient paradoxical tensions prevalent within this context. In exploring how architectural firms and their members make sense of these tensions, I outline and explain the importance of a paradoxical mindset, a paradoxical practice, and supporting organizational arrangements. I conclude by discussing the interplay among mindsets, practices, and arrangements as an organizing platform—a conceptual framework that future studies could explore further.     

Embracing the Paradox of Interorganizational Value Co‐creation–Value Capture: A Literature Review towards Paradox Resolution

This study reviews literature on paradoxical tensions between value co‐creation and capture in interorganizational relationships (IORs). The purpose of this review is to make a re‐evaluation of the literature by engaging a paradox theory lens, thereby identifying factors that render tensions salient and factors that lead to virtuous or vicious cycles. This review of 143 articles reveals factors that make tensions salient: these relate to plurality (e.g. coopetition), scarcity (e.g. lack of experience with IORs), change (e.g. changes in collaboration scope) or combinations thereof (e.g. IORs in weak appropriability regimes). Results also uncover factors that resolve paradoxical tensions of value co‐creation and capture, thus spurring virtuous cycles (e.g. carefully mixing trust and contracts), as well as factors that promote vicious cycles, owing to the emphasis on either value co‐creation or capture (e.g. myopia of learning). This review further reveals a new category of factors that may stimulate either virtuous or vicious cycles, depending on the extent to which they are enforced. This finding expands the value co‐creation–capture paradox resolution and brings to light new dynamics in the paradox framework of dynamic equilibrium. This study thus contributes by: (1) reassessing the existing literature and applying paradox theory to the well‐known hazard of value co‐creation and capture; (2) highlighting factors that amplify paradoxical tensions related to this hazard; and (3) outlining factors that help solve the paradox by embracing its contradictory poles and factors that hinder paradox resolution by emphasizing either value co‐creation or appropriation.     

Underestimating our influence over others at work

Employees at all organizational levels have influence over their subordinates, their colleagues, and even their bosses. But are they aware of this influence? We present evidence suggesting that employees are constrained by cognitive biases that lead them to underestimate their influence over others in the workplace. As a result of this underestimation of influence, employees may be reluctant to spearhead organizational change, discount their own role in subordinates’ performance failures, and fail to speak up in the face of wrongdoing. In addition to reviewing evidence for this bias, we propose five moderators that, when present, may reverse or attenuate the underestimation effect (namely, comparative judgments, the objectification or dehumanization of an influence target, the actual degree of influence any one influencer has, the means of influence, and culture). Finally, we offer some practical solutions to help employees more fully recognize their influence over other members of the organization.     

A Multi‐level Dialectical–Paradox Lens for Top Management Team Strategic Decision‐Making in a Corporate Venture

This paper aims to critique the process of corporate‐owned, high‐tech start‐up strategizing through an inductive, longitudinal, case study of ‘UK‐Research‐Tech’. Insights are given through the combined ‘dialectical–paradox’ concept, thereby focusing on where ‘dialectic’ and ‘paradox’ theorizing overlap. This linked iterative, ‘dialogical–dialectic’ research approach also reflects chief executive officer/top management team (CEO/TMT) start‐up dynamics over time. These foci fill important gaps that impede better understanding of dialectical, dialogical and paradoxical forces within strategic decision‐making. As an interpretative tool, they illuminate CEO/TMT strategizing and changing interrelationships affected by broader, volatile, techno‐economic contexts and parent‐company influences on ventures. In this case study, it was found that the CEO's relatively autocratic, parent‐framed approach combined with TMT members' contradictory reactions to create ‘dialectical–paradox’ oppositional forces, eventually only resolved through ‘eleventh hour’ business strategy changes to rescue the venture. This research contributes to more nuanced understandings of corporate‐constrained ventures during early business development from start‐up strategic decisions at parent‐company level to subsequent conditions of more independent dynamic equilibrium. The ‘dialectical–paradox’ conceptual lens contributes an innovative critique of processes affecting strategic decision‐making dynamics. Another important contribution is the empirically inspired conceptual model, developed for use both to guide subsequent case‐study research analyses and as a reflective tool for CEO/TMT strategic decision‐making, especially within corporate‐inspired start‐ups.     

Traditional versus Secular Values and the Job–Life Satisfaction Relationship Across Europe

Using data from the European Values Survey (EVS), we examine the relationship between job and life satisfaction across Europe. We find that for the majority of employees job and life satisfaction are positively correlated, thus supporting the spillover hypothesis, whereby attitudes and practices developed in the life domain spill over into the work domain and vice versa. In contrast, we find little support for the compensation hypothesis, whereby employees who are dissatisfied in one domain seek compensatory rewards in the other domain. However, multivariate analysis reveals that the strength of the interaction between job and life satisfaction is mitigated by cultural values and interpersonal trust, as encapsulated in the ‘traditional versus secular values’ index reported in the EVS data. We thus find that predictors of the job–life satisfaction relationship vary across cultures and that such cross‐cultural variations are systematically related to salient cultural values and beliefs. The latter findings raise important questions about the universal application of existing theories in the subjective well‐being arena.     

Perceptions of organization development in South Korea: the use of a sensemaking approach

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study explores how employees engage in sensemaking during Organization Development (OD) initiatives in chaebols, that is, large family-owned firms in South Korea. In adopting a case study approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 37 respondents drawn from different levels of a chaebol to address three research questions. First, what key contextual factors are associated with employees’ sensemaking at different levels of an organization? Second, how do individuals at different levels of the organization make sense of an OD initiative through the ‘searching for plausibility’ property of sensemaking? Third, what contextual cues are influential when employees engage in ‘identity construction’ in sensemaking in response to an OD initiative? The findings and implications of the study demonstrate multiple subjective realities, which employees from different levels construct, indicating that the prevailing norms and practice within the existing culture, which have been influential in constructing the identities of employees should be identified when attempting to implement OD to change the organizational culture.     

Turnaround leadership core tensions during the company turnaround process

How leaders turn around declining performance is a significant issue for companies, their employees, their customers, their shareholders and, more generally, society. Leadership influence during times of change is well recognised in the literature; however, leadership during a turnaround is more complex and less understood. In-depth examinations of the role and activities of turnaround leaders have received insufficient attention in the literature to date. Specifically, studies have not investigated, in-depth, the tensions that leaders face during a turnaround process. To begin addressing this gap in the literature, we utilise case studies of four companies to examine the core tensions leaders experience, when they occur during the turnaround process and how they are managed. We frame our focus on leadership tensions in three prominent domains in the literature, leadership change, leadership assertiveness and strategic orientation. Our findings identify and detail the management of six core tensions that leaders experience across a five-stage turnaround process model. We conclude that effective turnaround leadership is less about particular skill sets or ‘types’ of leaders for different stages of the recovery process, and more about their ability to purposefully navigate and balance apparently conflicting activities within these tensions. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and practice.     

Does valuing androgyny and femininity lead to a female advantage? The relationship between gender-role,transformational leadership and identification

The notion of ‘think manager–think male’ has been demonstrated in many studies. The current study examines whether leaders are perceived as more effective when they have ‘feminine’, ‘masculine’ or ‘androgynous’ characteristics, and how this relates to the leader's and followers' sex. Using carefully matched samples of 930 employees of 76 bank managers, we studied the relationship between managers' gender-role identity (perceived ‘femininity’, ‘masculinity’ and ‘androgyny’) and how this relates to leadership effectiveness in terms of transformational leadership and personal identification with the leader. Our findings show that among both male and female leaders, ‘androgyny’ was more strongly related to transformational leadership and followers' identification than ‘non-androgyny’, and that leaders' ‘femininity’ was more strongly related to leadership effectiveness than ‘masculinity’. Furthermore, the results show that women paid a higher penalty for not being perceived as ‘androgynous’ (mixing ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’), in comparison to men with regard to personal identification. When examining same- versus cross-sex relationships, we found that ‘non-androgynous’ male managers were rated higher by their male employees than by their female employees. Our findings suggest that women and men who are interested in being perceived as effective leaders may be well advised to blend ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ behaviors, and even more so when they are in situations of non-congruency (i.e., women in leadership roles and leading in cross-sex relationships). We discuss the implications of these findings for both theory and practice.     

Merit‐based Rewards,Job Satisfaction and Voluntary Turnover: Moderating Effects of Employee Demographic Characteristics

This paper draws on the reflection theory of compensation (Thierry, H. (1998). ‘Compensating work’. in P. J. D. Drenth, H. Thierry and C. J. de Wolff (eds), Handbook of Work and Organizational Psychology, 2nd edn, pp. 291–315, Psychology Press: Hove; Thierry, H. F. (2001). ‘Job evaluation systems and pay grade structures: do they match’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 8, pp. 1313–1324) to examine the influence of individual merit‐based rewards on voluntary turnover via job satisfaction. It also tests the moderating effects of employees’ gender, age and education level between merit‐based rewards and job satisfaction. Data were collected from 636 employees in Japan at three points in time over a 12‐month period. The findings show that merit‐based rewards have a direct, positive effect on job satisfaction and an indirect effect on voluntary turnover. The effect of merit‐based rewards on job satisfaction was moderated by gender and education, providing evidence that merit‐based rewards are more important for male and highly educated employees. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Job stress in managers,professionals, and clerical workers

Abstract

The intensity and frequency of occurrence of 30 job stressors as measured by the job stress survey (JSS) were examined in white-collar employees of a large manufacturing firm, consisting of 68 managers, 171 professional (mostly engineers), and 69 clerical personnel. The highest levels of stress intensity were attributed to ‘lack of opportunity for advancement’ and ‘poor or inadequate supervision’. Individual stressors rated as occurring most often during the past six months were ‘frequent interruptions', ‘meeting deadlines’, and ‘dealing with crisis situations’. Factor analyses of the ratings of individual job stressors identified two job-stress factors, job pressure and lack of support, which were differentially related to age, gender, occupational level, locus of control, and job tenure and satisfaction. All three occupational groups attributed greater intensity to stressors that reflected lack of organizational support than to job pressures. Managers reported experiencing job pressures more often than professionals/engineers, but attributed less stress intensity to these pressures. ‘Lack of opportunity for advancement’ and ‘inadequate salary’ were the most salient stressors for the clerical workers. Implications of the findings for the design of stress management and organizational change programmes were discussed.     

Criteria for evaluating qualitative studies

Many countries are becoming increasingly reliant upon an aging workforce. Yet, much literature positions older workers as ‘last resort’ employees, held in low esteem by employers whose preference for youth extends into decision-making about workplace engagement and support. As part of a broader study on maintaining the competence of older workers, we investigated the extent to which a group of employees in Australia aged 45 or more perceived they were discriminated against because of their age, including access to training, promotion opportunities and job security. Against expectations arising from the literature, informants reported little in the way of explicit age-related bias in their employment, opportunities for advancement and further development. Although the informants have particular characteristics and featured paraprofessional and professional workers, the contrast is noteworthy between what is reported in the literature and often premised on surveys, and our data were based on interviews. The findings indicate a need to be wary of making easy generalizations about the extent to which older workers per se are discriminated against in the workplace, while at the same time acknowledging that such discrimination exists, and perhaps for particular kinds of workers. In addition, we found a range of nuanced responses that suggest there are tensions between discriminations policies and practice that are a challenge for human resource development professionals.     

Paradoxes and Dual Processes: A Review and Synthesis

Paradox and dual‐process theories are used by management and organization researchers in studying a variety of phenomena across a wide range of management sub‐fields. Cognition is a focal point of both of these theories. However, despite their growing importance and shared areas of inquiry, these two theories have developed largely in isolation from each other. To address this lack of integration, the authors conducted a review and synthesis of relevant aspects of the paradox and dual‐process literatures. Focusing bidirectionally on how paradox theory informs dual‐process theory and how dual‐process theory informs paradox theory, they highlight the ‘nestedness’ of intuition and analysis in paradox (a paradox within paradoxical thinking). On the basis of the review and synthesis, they identify four themes (epistemological and ontological assumptions in the relationship between intuition and analysis; psychological and psychometric issues in the relationships between intuition and analysis; managers’ experiences of tensions between intuition and analysis; managers’ approaches to tensions between intuition and analysis) and introduce an integrative framework that assimilates these two perspectives and sets out an agenda for future research and implications for management.     

Evidence‐based Management in Practice: Opening up the Decision Process,Decision‐maker and Context

Evidence‐based management (EBM) has been subject to a number of persuasive critiques in recent years. Concerns have been raised that: EBM over‐privileges rationality as a basis for decision‐making; ‘scientific’ evidence is insufficient and incomplete as a basis for management practice; understanding of how EBM actually plays out in practice is limited; and, although ideas were originally taken from evidence‐based medicine, individual‐situated expertise has been forgotten in the transfer. To address these concerns, the authors adopted an approach of ‘opening up’ the decision process, the decision‐maker and the context (Langley et al. ( 1995 ). ‘Opening up decision making: the view from the black stool’, Organization Science, 6, pp. 260–279). The empirical investigation focuses on an EBM decision process involving an operations management problem in a hospital emergency department in Australia. Based on interview and archival research, it describes how an EBM decision process was enacted by a physician manager. It identifies the role of ‘fit’ between the decision‐maker and the organizational context in enabling an evidence‐based process and develops insights for EBM theory and practice.     

The Sound of Silence. Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Discrimination in ‘Inclusive Organizations’

Most studies on diversity and discrimination in the workplace have focused on ‘visible’ minorities such as gender or race, often neglecting the experiences of invisible minorities such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) workers. In this paper we explore the practices of inclusion/exclusion of LGBTs in the workplace in Italian social cooperatives, which are specifically founded to create employment for people who are disadvantaged in the labour market. The study examines how organizations, which have an ethos focused on inclusion and mainly employ workers from specific social minority groups, manage the inclusion of LGBT workers. We also explore the experience of LGBT workers within these organizations. The paper reports that the culture of silence existing in the five organizations studied prevents LGBT employees from constructing a work identity which encompasses their sexual identity and prevents the organizations from achieving their aim of being fully inclusive workplaces.     

团队成员目标取向与建言行为的关系:一个跨层分析

研究以国内某大型企业集团27个营销团队共201名团队成员为研究对象,采用多水平研究方法,通过构建多层数据模型(HLM),以自我激励和个体-情景互动理论为框架对团队成员个体目标导向、团队氛围和员工建言行为的关系进行了探讨.研究发现目标导向不同的个体,其建言行为也有差异,相对于发展导向,表现导向的个体更多地卷入建言行为.团队心理安全感不仅对员工建言行为有直接显著影响,而且在个体目标导向(表现导向)与建言行为的关系中有正向的跨层调节效应:团队心理安全感越高,表现导向的个体越倾向于建言行为,团队心理安全感越低,表现导向与建言行为的关系越不明显.团队氛围对于其他目标导向与建言行为关系的跨层调节效果不显著.     

Balancing employees’ extrinsic requirements and intrinsic motivation: A paradoxical leader behaviour perspective

In this paper, we use self-determination theory to examine the benefits of the use of paradoxical leader behaviour (PLB) by supervisors. We posit that PLB can initiate two complementary mechanisms: a top-down mechanism (perception of leaders' legitimate power) that may encourage employees to satisfy and exceed standard performance criteria, and a bottom-up mechanism (employee intrinsic motivation) that stimulates employees to be proactive. We argue that implementing these mechanisms simultaneously may interactively enhance employee creativity. Our study is based on field data collected from a sample of 392 employees and their supervisors. We find that PLB is positively related to employees’ perception of legitimate power and intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, power perception and intrinsic motivation are associated with standard performance and proactive behaviour, respectively, and these mechanisms jointly influence employee creativity. In demonstrating the efficacy of balancing extrinsic requirements and intrinsic motivation, our findings have significant theoretical and empirical implications for employee motivation.     

Crafting business models for conflicting goals: Lessons from creative service firms

The business model construct has become attractive to both managers and academics. It reflects how the most important organization's strategic and tactical choices regarding the allocation of resources interact in order to create and capture value. Yet with the growing entrepreneurial complexity, managers often end up pursuing conflicting and even paradoxical strategic goals, thus rendering the business modelling processes more complex, too. Well-known examples are profit versus social value, stakeholder versus company interests, exploration versus exploitation and environmental sustainability versus economic returns. The academic business model literature so far has provided limited insights on how to implement business models beyond a single goal and focused mainly on the initial strategic choice of a business model, ignoring that such salient tensions are often persistent and resurface within the business practice. In this study we leverage paradox theory to investigate how managers of creative firms make tactical choices to accommodate (not solve) salient tensions within their business models, focusing on the domains like services provided, choice of clients, networking and resourcing practices, revenue models and new venture creation. Based on qualitative case study research, we found four integrating and three differentiating decision-making tactics that managers deploy to create both economic and creative value through their business models. Adding to the business model theory, we show how business models are crafted in managerial practices by making tactical decisions to solve conflicts and paradoxes. The results equally enrich the paradox literature by providing for tactical-level approaches toward working through the paradox.     

Conflict of values— the central strategy problem

There is growing evidence that the central strategy question for business is no longer ‘what business are you in?’ but‘why are you in business?’ The traditional answers to this question—‘to make profits’, ‘to grow’ and ‘to give an adequate return to the shareholder’, are all being questioned. In their place others are being suggested—‘to provide satisfying jobs’, ‘to help solve social problems’, ‘to assist in urban and regional development’.In this article, Bernard Taylor suggests that the conflict between business goals and social goals has become the central strategy problem. Business enterprises like other organizations tend to develop their own distinctive sub-cultures with their own value systems which may differ markedly from the values accepted in society generally. The more effective the selection, training and reward systems, the more these business values will be reinforced.But this can lead to difficulties when society begins to reject business values in favour of other social goals; particularly at a time when the power and autonomy of management is being challenged and Corporate Planning is being transformed from an internal dialogue between managers at headquarters and managers in divisions into an open debate involving public servants, employees and self-appointed representatives of community interests.     

Corporate Ideology – Meanings and Contradictions for Middle Managers

This paper describes an investigation into corporate ideology and control and the responses of the ‘middle managers’ in a large engineering corporation. The paper explores the creation of meaning and values in the organization through a large‐scale ‘corporate values’ programme aimed at 1500 middle managers, and asks to what extent the priorities of these managers match those of the organization, and whether the creation of meaning through an ideological values programme carries risks that have not been considered by the organization adopting this approach. The findings suggest six individual response types amongst the delegates on the programme: ‘evangelists’, ‘actors’, ‘sceptics’, ‘open cynics’, ‘critical thinkers’ and ‘untouched professionals’. The influences upon these responses are considered, and a number of key factors identified as important in affecting perceptions of and response to the programme. The paper concludes that today more than ever, corporate ideologies are becoming an increasingly dominant influence on our organizations, causing mixed and confused responses amongst the middle managers who are required to disseminate these messages.     

Managerial and leadership effectiveness as perceived by managers and non-managerial employees in Mexico

Using the critical incident (CI) technique, concrete examples of effective and ineffective managerial behaviour (CIs) were collected from managers and non-managerial employees within private and public sector organizations situated in the north and southeast regions of Mexico. The CIs were content analysed using open, axial and selective coding to identify a smaller number of thematic categories. A total of 38 ‘manager’ and 35 ‘non-managerial employee’ behavioural categories were identified respectively, of which 82.19% (n = 60) were found to be either convergent or polar opposite in meaning. The findings suggest that what behaviourally differentiates effective managers from ineffective managers is perceived, described and defined by Mexican managers and non-managerial employees in much the same way. The study provides new insights on the issue of perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness in Mexico and is a rare example of indigenous managerial behaviour research in a non-Anglo country.