Apologies for cross-posting
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (special topic forum)
The Role of Paradox Theory in Decision Making and Management Research
David A. Waldman, Linda L. Putnam, Ella Miron-Spektor and Donald Siegel
In our increasingly complex, global and fast-paced world, competing demands on individuals and teams continually surface in the context of organizational life. Individuals face challenges between work and family, learning and performing, collaborating and competing. Teams grapple with tensions between individual and collective accomplishments, specializing and coordination, and meeting creativity and efficiency goals. Leaders need to maintain both distance and closeness, treat subordinates uniformly while allowing individualism, and ensure decision control while allowing autonomy. Moreover, in an increasingly global environment, individuals and leaders must increasingly act globally, while dealing with local demands or nuances. Perhaps as an even greater challenge, they may value nationalistic concerns, while simultaneously embracing multiculturalism and a global mindset.
The rapidly expanding field of organizational paradox and dialectics offers insights into the nature and management of these tensions (see Putnam, Fairhurst, & Banghart, 2016; Schad, Lewis, Raisch, & Smith, 2016). These varying literatures all share a common focus on multiple demands that are both contradictory, as well as interdependent. Rather than depict competing demands as problems that require immediate solutions, these literatures describe tensions that are embedded and persistent over time. Scholars have adopted a paradox lens to understand tensions across levels and across phenomena including tensions in human resource management (Aust, Brandl, & Keegan, 2015), leadership (Owens, Wallace, & Waldman, 2015; Zhang, Waldman, Han, & Li, 2015), identity (Elsbach & Bhattacharya, 2001; Kreiner, Hollensbe, Sheep, Smith, & Kataria, 2015), creativity (Miron-Spektor, Erez, & Naveh, 2011), goal setting (Miron-Spektor & Beenen, 2015), teams (Ashforth & Reingen, 2014; Murnighan & Conlon, 1991), social responsibility and sustainability (Hahn, Preuss, Pinkse, & Figge, 2014), hybrid organizing (Jay, 2013), innovation (Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2009; Smith, 2014), academic entrepreneurship (Link, Siegel, & Wright, 2015), gender and diversity (Ashcraft, 2013; Gill, 2012; van den Brink & Stobbe, 2009), among others. As this growing body of research suggests, a paradox lens truly offers a new way of viewing organizational phenomena, as well as solutions and ways of responding to ongoing problems that managers and organizations face.
However, as scholars increasingly adopt a paradox approach, key questions prevail that present opportunities to expand the value of this lens. First, accumulated research has predominantly examined organizational-level approaches to leveraging these tensions. But as our world becomes more complex, paradoxical tensions critically emerge at the individual and team levels of analyses. Newly developed theories and instruments may enable more micro-level research of paradoxes. Second, theorizing on paradox, dualities and dialectics has predominantly stressed perspectives centered in Western thinking. Yet Eastern philosophical traditions offer additional, expansive, or even contradictory perspectives about the nature and implications of paradox (e.g., see Li, 2014; Nisbett, 2010; Peng & Nisbett, 1999). Researchers then can benefit from addressing cultural differences and similarities to expand insight into the way individuals and teams in different cultures, as well as in multicultural settings, cope with tensions. Finally, while scholars who use a paradox lens depict competing demands as residing in dynamic, persistent tensions, most management studies treat paradoxical phenomena as static and fixed (Schad et al., 2016). Researchers who embrace a dialectical lens emphasize processual approaches to studying contradictions and paradoxes (Farjoun, in press; Langley & Sloan, 2011; Putnam et al., 2016). An expansion of our understanding of paradoxes through a process lens will require more longitudinal approaches that explore dynamics over time (Langley, 1999).
This special issue of OBHDP will generate new insights in decision making, management, and organizational theory by applying a paradox lens across a broad range of phenomena and existing theories. Specifically, it will further theory development in two explicit ways. First, the special issue will enrich our understanding of paradox theory by calling for micro-level studies that draw on a variety of cultural histories, and explore not only static, but also dynamic conceptualizations of management. Second, we encourage discipline-based studies that use a paradox lens as a meta-perspective to provide insights into a range of management or organizational phenomena. Accordingly, this special issue seeks to advance not only paradox theory, but also more discipline- or topically-based theoretical areas. Thus, we expect and encourage papers from multiple levels of analysis, across a number of topical areas, using a variety of methodologies, including surveys, qualitative case studies, experiments, and neuroscience-based methods. In addition, authors may submit theory development papers. Examples of research questions that might be addressed include:
· How do tensions and contradictions interface at individual, team and organizational levels in ways that create opportunities and challenges in responding to them?
· How do ways of recognizing, responding to, and managing paradoxes exemplify and embrace Eastern as well as Western philosophies that underlie contradictions?
· What explains our ability to recognize and effectively cope with paradoxical tensions?
· Can neuroscience concepts and methods offer insights into paradoxical mindsets or cognition?
· What insights do we gain from process studies of dialectics and paradoxes that focus on particular organizational phenomena, such as leadership, negotiation, conflict management, and ethical issues, and so forth?
· How do we engage both individual contributions and collective teamwork to enable increased performance and success?
· How can teams simultaneously capitalize on diversity, while maintaining homogeneity?
· Is it possible for managers and organizations to best maintain control by letting go of it, and if so, how?
· With regard to work design, how can organizations best achieve control and flexibility simultaneously?
· In a global environment, how can individuals and organizations deal with the tensions between local and global thinking, or nationalism and multiculturalism?
· What are the managerial implications of adopting a paradox lens for various performance outcomes, and in different cultures?
· How can university faculty maintain their identities as academic scientists, while simultaneously engaging in commercialization of their intellectual property and entrepreneurship?
Timeline
Papers should be submitted by March 1, 2018. Papers can be submitted through the OBHDP submission portal from Feb.1-March 1, 2018.
Submission
Manuscripts should be submitted online to the OBHDP via EVISE. Please ensure you select the correct special issue when submitting your paper. Please refer to the Guide for Authors before submission.
Contact Information
David Waldman (waldman@asu.edu)
Ella Miron-Spektor (ellams@technion.ac.il
Linda Putnam (putna@comm.ucsb.edu)
Don Siegel (donaldsieg@gmail.com)