Paradox studies offer vital and timely insights into an array of organizational tensions. Yet this field stands at a critical juncture. Over the past 25 years, management scholars have drawn foundational insights from philosophy and psychology to apply a paradox lens to organizational phenomena. Yet extant studies selectively leverage ancient wisdom, adopting some key insights while abandoning others. Using a structured content analysis to review the burgeoning management literature, we surface six key themes, which represent the building blocks of a metatheory of paradox. These six themes received varying attention in extant studies: Paradox scholars emphasize types of paradoxes, collective approaches, and outcomes, but pay less attention to relationships within paradoxes, individual approaches, and dynamics. As this analysis suggests, management scholars have increasingly simplified the intricate, often messy phenomena of paradox. Greater simplicity renders phenomena understandable and testable, however, oversimplifying complex realities can foster reductionist and incomplete theories. We therefore propose a future research agenda targeted at enriching a meta-theory of paradox by reengaging these less developed themes. Doing so can sharpen the focus of this field, while revisiting its rich conceptual roots to capture the intricacies of paradox. This future research agenda leverages the potential of paradox across diverse streams of management science.

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. phenomena. Yet extant studies selectively leverage ancient wisdom, adopting some key insights while abandoning others. Using a structured content analysis to review the burgeoning management literature, we surface six key themes, which represent the building blocks of a metatheory of paradox. These six themes received varying attention in extant studies: Paradox scholars emphasize types of paradoxes, collective approaches, and outcomes, but pay less attention to relationships within paradoxes, individual approaches, and dynamics. As this analysis suggests, management scholars have increasingly simplified the intricate, often messy phenomena of paradox. Greater simplicity renders phenomena understandable and testable, however, oversimplifying complex realities can foster reductionist and incomplete theories. We therefore propose a future research agenda targeted at enriching a meta-theory of paradox by reengaging these less developed themes. Doing so can sharpen the focus of this field, while revisiting its rich conceptual roots to capture the intricacies of paradox. This future research agenda leverages the potential of paradox across diverse streams of management science. Permanent repository link4

Paradox theory has fundamentally changed how researchers think about organizational tensions by emphasizing their oppositions and their interdependencies. Yet, most paradox studies focus on salient, perceived tensions, ignoring latent, nested tensions and their complex interconnections. This partial view is rooted in the paradox literature focusing on the epistemological realm (actors' perception of tensions) while disregarding the ontological realm (tensions' underlying reality). The focus on the epistemological aspects of the tensions impedes researchers from moving to more intricate insights into paradox, which could help address the realities of complex issues, such as wicked problems. We propose a systems perspective on paradox that discriminates the epistemological understandings from the ontological realities of tensions. By revealing the ontology of tensions, the underlying complexity becomes empirically interpretable. We illustrate the power of this perspective by offering two research strategies that can help researchers and organizations apprehend paradoxes grounded in systems.

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