Reflections: Return Paradox to the Wild? Paradox Interventions and Their Implications

Abstract

argued that paradox research has fallen victim to its own success. In a race for institutionalization, paradoxes have putatively been removed from their natural habitat and 'tamed,' as the search for best practices has decontextualized, abstracted, and reified them. This essay responds to Cunha and Putnam by first cataloguing various interventions based in paradox and, relatedly, dialectics and then addressing the issues surrounding their oversimplification. If, as research suggests, paradoxes are so embedded in the daily actions and interactions of organizational life that they become difficult to spot or are too intertwined in systems of contradictions, how should we be thinking about interventions, including those less inclined to make a deep dive into context?

Extending the Dynamic Equilibrium Model of Paradox: Unveiling the dissipative dynamics in organizations

“…The model conceptualizes maintaining equilibrium amid organizational tensions as continuous balancing. Building on recent theoretical work that has challenged the dynamic equilibrium model for its lack of process sensitivity (Cunha & Clegg, 2018; Cunha & Putnam, 2019; Fairhurst, 2019; Farjoun, 2016; Putnam et al, 2016), we focus on how the dynamics of paradox play out beyond “a steady state of dynamic equilibrium” (Cunha & Clegg, 2018, p. 17). Based on our analysis, we put forward the dissipative equilibrium model as a means to better capture the temporary nature of balance and the continuous attention and interventions needed from management to (re)balance an organization.…”

The Lived Experience of Paradox: How Individuals Navigate Tensions during the Pandemic Crisis

“…Methods that surface emotions, such as drawing and collective inquiry (Vince & Broussine, 1996), can offer a useful complementary intervention to paradox mindset training. To date, documented paradox interventions tend to say too little about emotions, betraying a bias for overly rational approaches (Fairhurst et al, 2019; Putnam et al, 2016). Tears and affective dynamics might encourage paradox scholars to expand their methodological toolkit.…”

Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Organizational Paradox

“…Considering organizations in a recursive perspective (Hernes & Bakken, 2003), highlighting their paradoxical nature (Luhmann, 2018) can confront us with mindboggling complexity. Instead of recurring to an excessive simplification that risks to decontextualize, abstract, and reify paradox (Cunha & Putnam, 2019) it is important to balance wild complexity and tamed but actionable simplification (Fairhurst, 2019). In this chapter we have seen that a holistic 'logic(s) of paradox' can help put in relationship multiple varieties of paradox, extending the limit of restrictive theorizations that are implicitly bounded by tacit assumptions.…”