Alternate Prisms for Pluralism and Paradox in Organizations

Abstract

The literature on paradoxes and pluralism has grown over the last decade. Although both concepts refer to multiplicity in or around organizations, they have been explored in parallel and have rarely been juxtaposed. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the possible interrelations between these concepts and their implications for the study of paradox within organizations. The chapter further seeks to contrast current notions of paradox and pluralism, and expand understanding of these phenomena by looking at them through two alternate theoretical prisms, namely Critical Management Studies (CMS) and complexity theory. In so doing, new lines of inquiry are opened up around paradoxical situations in pluralistic organizations. These alternate prisms invite further exploration into the interface between paradoxes and pluralism, and highlight the potential of performativity without instrumentality to guide strategies for balancing and benefiting from these important dimensions of contemporary organizations.

Toward a Process Theory of Making Sustainability Strategies Legitimate in Action

“…Yet we expect these notions of legitimacy making to be increasingly important in studies where multiple strategies are being implemented. Given the pluralistic nature of organizations (Denis, Langley, & Rouleau, 2007;Smith, Lewis, Jarzabkowski, & Langley, 2017b), dual or even multiple strategies that have different legitimacy appeals to different stakeholders are likely to be increasingly pertinent, and to create extensive challenges for organizations (Comeau-Vallée, Denis, Normandin, & Therrien, 2017;Denis, Langley & Sergi, 2012). While our study examined a new SUST, there are likely to be many other contexts in which one or more new strategies need to be co-enacted with an existing strategy, such as digitalization strategies (e.g., Ivang, Rask, & Hinson, 2009), online strategies (e.g., Edelman, 2007), or regulatory strategies (e.g., Jarzabkowski et al, 2013;Marcus & Geffen, 1998), giving rise to legitimacy struggles during their implementation.…”

A Transparadox Process of Decision Making

“…Even still, such a method merely emphasizes the tensional and contradictory aspects, ruling out the purely complementary elements and relationships that may also exist in the system (Ford & Ford, 1994). Moreover, the relationships within a system, we believe, are not always dyadic, and paradox is more than a dyad (Comeau-Vallée, Denis, Normandin, & Therrien, 2017). The notions such as trilemma, triality, and trialectics cannot be analyzed only through the summation of embedded dyadic contradictory relationships given by Sheep and colleagues (2017) and Schad and Bansal (2018).…”

Exploring inter-organizational paradoxes: Methodological lessons from a study of a grand challenge

“…By tracking problematization, we can uncover how an insurance company’s problem of risk reflexive pricing (private market concern) versus affordability (public good concern) shifts meaning as it becomes a local authority’s problem of sustainable housing versus affordable housing, due to the expense of rebuilding for more resilient housing. This provides a more nuanced multi-stakeholder view of paradox as persistent because it is grounded in pluralistic stakeholder objectives, interests and values that shift over time (Comeau-Vallée et al, 2017). Tracking problematization thus provides a means to more fully explore paradoxes as a complex nexus of multiple shifting meanings across organizations, enabling scholars to move towards the study of multiple, related paradoxes (Bednarek et al, 2017), rather than the current tendency to examine polarized dualities.…”

“…Further research of this nature will allow us to take organizational experiences of paradox seriously, while not over-privileging that experience at the expense of addressing the grand challenges from which such tensions stem (Schad and Bansal, 2018). In doing so, we can address calls for paradox research to go beyond its focus on the dualities that comprise organizational paradoxes, to embracing, and potentially addressing, the complex, nested, and pluralistic origins of these paradoxes (Comeau-Vallée et al, 2017; Schad and Bansal, 2018; Smith and Tracey, 2016). Indeed, in drawing on this framework to analyze our own data, we hope both our and others’ future research will illustrate the power of a paradox perspective to provide insight into some of the critical challenges facing society.…”