Breaking the Paradox: Understanding How Teams Create Developmental Space

Abstract

Past research shows that teams working on a complex task need developmental space to be successful. They can create this space in their interaction by undertaking four activities: creating future, reflecting, organizing, and dialoguing. These four activities refer to two orientations: the performance orientation, limiting the space, and the sensemaking orientation, opening up the space. Teams need them both, yet it seems inconsistent and impossible to achieve together, thus a paradox. In this exploratory research, we address the way in which teams experience and handle that “developmental space paradox,” and how it affects team success. Individual team members ( N = 70) from 12 teams were interviewed. Successful ( n = 7) and unsuccessful ( n = 5) teams were compared. The results show that successful teams experience this paradox differently than the unsuccessful teams, and that both categories choose other coping strategies to handle this paradox.

Diversity management as navigation through organizational paradoxes

“…These defensive strategies are considered dysfunctional because paradox avoidance leads to a vicious circle (Jay, 2012; Lewis, 2000). On the other hand, handling paradox requires recognizing it, responding to it and deploying coping strategies (Derksen et al , 2017). Paradox can be embraced, which means acknowledging inherent inconsistency and contending with it flexibly.…”

Paradoxical Leadership and Employee Task Performance: A Sense-Making Perspective

“…Most research on paradoxical leadership has focused on its beneficial influence in organizations, as exemplified by improvements in performance ( Smith and Lewis, 2011 ; Amason, 2017 ), creativity ( Knight and Harvey, 2015 ), commitment ( Smith, 2015 ), competitiveness ( Fredberg, 2014 ; Derksen et al, 2017 ), the workplace environment ( Lewis and Smith, 2014 ; Gnyawali et al, 2016 ; Knight and Paroutis, 2017 ) and career success ( Derksen et al, 2017 ). In addition to its beneficial effects on organizations, research has shown that paradoxical leadership has positive influences on employees in terms of their work attitudes ( Kan and Parry, 2004 ; Garg, 2016 ), work engagement ( Alfes and Langner, 2017 ; Fürstenberg et al, 2021 ), work role performance ( Zhang et al, 2015 ), creativity ( Shao et al, 2019 ; Yang et al, 2021 ), and innovative behaviors ( Milosevic et al, 2015 ; Ingram et al, 2016 ; Zhang et al, 2021 ).…”

Continuously responding to paradox with third spaces: a process study on change in a nursing unit

“…These sites are third spaces and form an "ecology of spaces" (Bucher & Langley, 2016: 19;Putnam et al, 2014: 433). Conceptualizing the emergence of permanent third spaces, I also advance knowledge about existing (Derksen et al, 2019;Huq et al, 2017) or temporary third spaces (Barge et al, 2008;Jay, 2013;Luescher & Lewis, 2008).…”

“…Actors without or with a paradoxical mindset (Miron-Spektor et al, 2017) need to engage others (Smith, 2014) in meetings and conversations. Such social interactions are essential for coping with paradox (Derksen et al, 2019;Huq et al, 2017;Jarzabkowski & Lê, 2017), for interpreting instances (Knight & Paroutis, 2017), for sensemaking (Jay, 2013), for learning paradoxical thinking (Luescher & Lewis, 2008), or for exchanging opposing views (Westenholz, 1993). However, social interactions have hardly entered theoretical models, despite empirical evidence (e.g.…”

“…They enable participants to engage with issues concerning them (Jarzabkowski & Lê, 2017). The literature on third spaces provides insights into their inner workings (Barge et al, 2008;Bucher & Langley, 2016;Derksen et al, 2019;Huq et al, 2017), but little is known about how third spaces come about. Better understanding their emergence helps to explain how organizations can continuously cope with paradox.…”