SWG 09: Organizational Paradox: Engaging Plurality, Tensions and Contradictions
Coordinators
Costas Andriopoulos, City, University London, United Kingdom
Josh Keller, UNSW Sydney, Australia
Marianne W. Lewis, University of Cincinnati, USA
Ella Miron-Spektor, INSEAD, Europe Campus, France
Camille Pradies, EDHEC Business School, France
Jonathan Schad, King’s College London, United Kingdom
Wendy K. Smith, University of Delaware, USA
Organizational life faces unprecedented complexity. Multiple and contradictory goals, competing stakeholder demands, and fast-paced
change increasingly give rise to persistent and interwoven tensions, such as today and tomorrow, social missions and business
demands, centralization and decentralization, stability and change. Whereas traditional management research emphasizes contingency
approaches to make explicit choices between alternatives of a tension, a paradox approach underlines the value of embracing
competing demands simultaneously (Lewis, 2000). A paradox depicts a tension’s elements as contradictory and inconsistent,
yet also interdependent, synergistic, and mutually constituted (Farjoun, 2010; Smith & Lewis, 2011). Engaging competing demands
simultaneously enables long term organizational sustainability.