Current research trends on cognition, integrative complexity, and decision-making: a systematic literature review using activity theory and neuroscience

Introduction

This article presents a systematic literature review that follows the PRISMA and PICOS guidelines to analyze current research trends on cognition, integrative complexity (IC) (a cognitive feature focusing on information processing in a person's response rather than its quantity or quality), and decision-making from the perspectives of activity theory and neuroscience.

Methods

The study examines 31 papers published between 2012 and 2022 and 19 articles specifically related to neuroscience. We performed a content analysis using six categories within activity theory: subjects, objects, rules, community, division of labor, and outcomes.

Results

The study investigates the relationship between decision-making outcomes and IC as a cognitive feature in various contexts. Additionally, content analysis on neuroscience and IC revealed significant research gaps, including understanding the nature of IC, challenges related to its measurement, and differentiation from other cognitive features. We also identify opportunities for investigating the brain's activity during decision-making in relation to IC.

Discussion

We address the need for a more precise categorization of IC in studies of cognition, IC, and decision-making. We discuss the implications of our analysis for understanding the cognitive nature of IC and the potential of neuroscience methods for studying this attribute.

The Influence of Authoritarian-Benevolent Leadership on Subordinates' Work Engagement: A Social Information Processing Perspective

Purpose

The dynamic and complex external environment calls for leaders to be both benevolent and authoritarian to cope with the mutually exclusive demands in the management process. But few research paid attention to the dark side of leaders' inconsistent behaviors on employees' work outcomes. Based on social information processing theory, this study investigated the impact of authoritarian-benevolent leadership on subordinates' work engagement and explored the mediating role of leader-member exchange ambivalence and the moderating role of trait mindfulness.

Methods

A two-wave time-lagged survey approach was employed and data from 309 employees from three Chinese companies were collected. R 4.2.1 and SPSS 26.0 were used to test our hypotheses.

Results

The findings demonstrated how subordinates were influenced in their work engagement by authoritarian-benevolent leadership and leader-member exchange ambivalence and emphasized the value of maintaining a high level of trait mindfulness. This study indicated that (1) authoritarian-benevolent leadership was negatively associated with work engagement, which was mediated by leader-member exchange ambivalence; (2) subordinates' trait mindfulness moderated the relationship between leader-member exchange ambivalence and work engagement; (3) the indirect effect of authoritarian-benevolent leadership on subordinates' work engagement through leader-member exchange ambivalence was moderated by subordinates' trait mindfulness.

Conclusion

This study reveals the dark side of authoritarian-benevolent leadership and deepens our understanding of the mechanism underlying the effect of authoritarian-benevolent leadership on subordinates' work engagement from a new theoretical perspective. Practical implications are provided for managers to effectively develop authoritarian-benevolent leadership skills and improve subordinates' work engagement.

Goal-Based Private Sustainability Governance and Its Paradoxes in the Indonesian Palm Oil Sector

In response to stakeholder pressure, companies increasingly make ambitious forward-looking sustainability commitments. They then draw on corporate policies with varying degrees of alignment to disseminate and enforce corresponding behavioral rules among their suppliers and business partners. This goal-based turn in private sustainability governance has important implications for its likely environmental and social outcomes. Drawing on paradox theory, this article uses a case study of zero-deforestation commitments in the Indonesian palm oil sector to argue that goal-based private sustainability governance's characteristics set the stage for two types of paradoxes to emerge: performing paradoxes between environmental, social, and economic sustainability goals, and organizing paradoxes between cooperation and competition approaches. Companies' responses to these paradoxes, in turn, can explain the lack of full goal attainment and differential rates of progress between actors. These results draw our attention to the complexities hidden behind governance through goal setting in the corporate space, and raise important questions about the viability of similar strategies such as science-based targets and net-zero goals.

Character-enabled improvisation and the new normal: A paradox perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified and exacerbated organizational paradoxes felt by individuals largely because of the nostalgia individuals feel for the "old" normal while facing the need to let go in order to create a "new" normal. We position improvisation as a synthesis-type approach to working through the paradoxes of the pandemic. Furthermore, we look at individual differences that underpin the ability to improvise, and identify that it is the strength of character and character-based judgment of the individual that enables the enactment of a focal context, the choice to improvise, and the act of effectively improvising to work through paradoxes. Linking character to improvisation, and, vice versa, improvisation to the development of character, reveals the importance of dimensions such as courage, humility, temperance, transcendence, humanity, and collaboration in the practice of improvisation.

Algorithmic management, preferences for autonomy/security and gig-workers' wellbeing: A matter of fit?

The objective of this study was to understand how gig-workers interpret the effects of their laboral activity on their wellbeing. We developed a grounded theory based on interviews with 57 Brazilian gig-workers. The results show that (1) workers and gig-work organizations have preferences for work relationships with more autonomy or security; (2) when there is a congruence of preferences, the worker experiences greater wellbeing, and when the preferences diverge, there are episodes of preference violations that, when repeated, reduce worker wellbeing; and (3) however, not everything is a matter of fit: when both individuals and organizations have the same preference (for example, for more autonomy and less security), worker wellbeing may be vulnerable to abuse, for example, in terms of an unsustainable workload. Our study draws attention to an integrated discussion of the benefits and harms of algorithmic management, which allows overcoming a polarized view in which it would be seen only as beneficial or harmful to workers.

Leading in the Paradoxical World of Crises: How Leaders Navigate Through Crises

Living and operating in a global world, the risk for a global economic crisis has never been greater. As ongoing events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent war in Ukraine or the sharply increasing inflation have shown, organizations need to be highly resilient to persevere in a crisis-prone world. Even though we know that crises serve as a focal lens on leadership behavior and leaders play a crucial role in these scenarios, little is known as to how leaders handle an existence-threatening organizational crisis. Using an inductive analysis of 32 interviews on crisis leadership, we show that in the case of an acute crisis, leaders apply different paradoxical behaviors to cope effectively with the situation and navigate their organizations through these events. More specifically, our study contributes to existing literature by, first, showing that the distinctiveness of crises results from the fact that leaders are confronted with paradoxes that they can otherwise smoothly separate in terms of time or organization, second, revealing that the leader's paradoxical behaviors as a respond are derived from their mindset to consciously recognize the contradictory demands of the crisis, and third, from their action in terms of a compressed situational leadership. By identifying six pairs of paradoxical behaviors, we demonstrate how leaders effectively deal with the unsolvable contradictions that arise from the crisis, and thus contribute to the organizations' ability to cope with crises.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version of this article (10.1007/s41471-022-00147-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Managing unbounded digital transformation: exploring the role of tensions in a digital transformation initiative in the forestry industry

Purpose

Prior research has highlighted the pervasive importance of digital technologies in business and societal settings, but their enabling role in digital transformation, and effective forms of organization to address tensions that arise during attempts to promote it, have been insufficiently explored. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how and why tensions affect clusters established to foster digital transformation.

Design/methodology/approach

Empirical data were acquired through a qualitative exploratory holistic single case study, focused on the Swedish Cluster of Forest Technology. This included interviews with informants, selected by homogeneous purposive sampling, and event observation to investigate the personal perspectives of representatives of every company engaged in the cluster, followed by a thematic analysis of their comments.

Findings

The case study revealed three major tensions, between knowledge flow, collaboration and competition, but also others that were interrelated with those major tensions, related to matters such as trust and protection of intellectual property, power equality and hierarchy, and networks that must be managed in digital transformation efforts.

Originality/value

The paper extends understanding of the tensions that arise, and their management, in digital transformation processes.

Making things happen: How employees' paradox mindset influences innovative performance

Individual innovation involves many contradicted behavioral options such as creative vs. habitual actions and explorative vs. exploitative activities. However, the agentic nature of innovative behaviors has been widely ignored, and we know less about what factors lead individuals to approach and balance the contradictions caused by competing demands and intentionally engage in innovative behaviors. Integrating social cognitive theory and innovation paradox, we propose a chain-mediating model to explain how employees with a paradox mindset realize the creative benefits through their innovative endeavors, considering role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) and individual ambidexterity as two mediators. Using data collected from 480 employees paired with 100 supervisors at 3-time points, the results show that RBSE and individual ambidexterity play a mediating role, respectively, even though they sequentially play a chain-mediating role between employees' paradox mindset and innovative performance. Individuals who hold a paradox mindset are more likely to perceive high capability beliefs in successfully undertaking expanded roles, promoting behavioral tendencies to switch between exploration and exploitation, and in turn encouraging employees to undertake more innovative behaviors. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications for promoting employees' innovative performance from an agentic perspective. Employees with a paradox mindset can make creative things happen by managing the tensions between exploration and exploitation proactively. Thus, organizations may try to enhance employees' proactive motivation states and behavioral capability to encourage individual innovation.

What can healthcare systems learn from looking at tensions in innovation processes? A systematic literature review

Background

Until now, scholarship on innovation processes in healthcare systems lack an in-depth appreciation of tensions. Tensions often revolve around barriers and result from individual assessments and prioritizations that guide actions to eventually overcome these barriers. In order to develop a more differentiated understanding of tensions’ role in healthcare innovation processes, this paper aims to shed light on the multifaceted ways in which tensions emerge, are being dealt with, and how they hinder or, at times, facilitate innovation processes.

Methods

A systematic review of published and grey literature was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) guideline. The review involved searching three databases for original research articles and manually searching citations. Twenty-nine original full texts were identified, evaluated, and coded. These include papers on innovation in healthcare systems that investigated innovation-related organizational tensions. The findings were synthesized into different types of tensions in healthcare system innovation and the descriptions of the conflicting elements. We also analyzed the investigated innovations by type, process stages, and across different countries and healthcare systems.

Results

A total of forty-two tensions were identified and grouped into nine categories. Organizing tensions were predominant, followed by learning/belonging, performing, and performing/organizing tensions. Tensions most frequently occurred in the implementation phase and in the form of a dilemma. Included studies were conducted mainly in government-funded healthcare systems.

Conclusion

Our data suggest that innovation processes in healthcare systems are impaired by conflicts between contradictory elements, working cultures, and convictions and the organizational and regulatory context. Since the majority of the tensions we collected in our study can be addressed, future policy-making and research should take advantage of this fact and develop strategies that significantly influence the successful management of tensions and thus improve the implementation of innovations.

How potential and realized absorptive capacity increased ability to innovate: the moderating role of structural ambidexterity

Purpose

Digital start-ups have limited resources. With the demands of rapid growth, digital start-ups need to rely on their ability to explore external knowledge and exploit it into swift innovation. Developing absorptive capacity is an alternative to overcome this difficulty. This study aims to demonstrate how the potential and realized an increase in absorptive capacity enables organizations to innovate moderated by structural ambidexterity. Empirical evidence places more emphasis on the impact of absorptive capacity on innovation but still leaves the “black-box” question of innovation and how potential absorptive capacity (PACAP) can achieve realized absorptive capacity (RACAP).

Design/methodology/approach

This study tests, with a structural equation model, samples collected from 143 digital start-ups in Indonesia.

Findings

The finding of this study suggests that PACAP influences the ability to innovate only if RACAP mediates it and structural ambidexterity positively moderates the relationship between these two variables.

Research limitations/implications

First, this study uses digital start-up organizations as respondents. Second, this study explores the role of the structural ambidexterity that moderates the relationship between PACAP and RACAP manifested in digital start-ups organizations that are identical to temporary companies with limited resources. Third, digital start-ups have a fast-growth life cycle, unlike regular companies. Finally, the validated scale is based on data collected entirely from digital start-ups located in Indonesia, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to other industry contexts.

Practical implications

Start-ups suffer from the ability to innovate that increases their propensity to fail. They overcome this failure by increasing the absorptive capacity of the founding team to improve their ability to innovate. Because of limited resources available at digital start-ups, the flexibility of their management style can overcome these barriers, allowing the pursuit of both knowledge exploration and exploitation in a balanced way.

Originality/value

Most of the studies explained that the ability to innovate comes from absorptive capacity. In fact, they do not explore PACAP and RACAP and their relationships. Moreover, the studies also indicated that the contextual ambidexterity moderated PACAP and RACAP. Meanwhile, digital start-ups in this study revealed that structural ambidexterity with two dimensions, i.e. shared value, and behavioral integration, enables and positively moderates the relationship between PACAP and RACAP.

Research on the Influencing Mechanism of Paradoxical Leadership on Unethical Pro-Supervisor Behavior

Paradoxical leadership is a leadership style that combines both employees’ individual needs and organizational requirements. The existing literature shows that paradoxical leadership has a positive influence on variables at the individual level, team level and organizational level. It is necessary to further explore the negative impact of paradoxical leadership on the individual level (such as employees’ unethical pro-supervisor behavior), the path of influence and situational conditions. Based on social exchange theory, this paper studied the influence of paradoxical leadership on employees’ unethical pro-supervisor behavior, and clarified the mediating role of supervisor–subordinate Guanxi and the moderating effect of follower mindfulness. We conducted an empirical analysis on the data of 356 employees collected in two phases, and found that paradoxical leadership exerts a significant positive effect on unethical pro-supervisor behavior; supervisor–subordinate Guanxi has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between paradoxical leadership and unethical pro-supervisor behavior; and follower mindfulness moderates the influence of paradoxical leadership on supervisor–subordinate Guanxi, and moderates the intermediation of supervisor–subordinate Guanxi on the main effect. This paper enriches the existing research on the mechanism of influence of paradoxical leadership and deepens our understanding of boundary conditions in relation to the role of paradoxical leadership.

New Media, Digitalization, and the Evolution of the Professional Sport Industry

The professional sport industry achieved tremendous success in the traditional broadcast media age, established a multi-sided market and an effective business model for revenue growth. However, the emergence and proliferation of the new media technologies have drastically changed the media landscape, creating a much more complicated cross-media environment that unites popularity and personalization, structure and agency. Such a changing environment creates transformations within the professional sport industry, and adapting to these transformations will lead to the evolution of the professional sport industry and its success in the digital media age.

The fallacies of non-agility: Approaching organizational agility through a dialectical practice perspective

Complexity, paradox, tension, and contradiction are increasingly seen as permeating all aspects of organizational life. Yet despite ongoing advancement, both our understanding of the nature of complexity and how to use this increased appreciation of it in practice are still developing. In this spirit, this article considers organizational agility and how to achieve it. Here, current discussions of organizational agility have failed to sufficiently address the fundamental tensions inherent in learning stemming from conflicting goals and incentives, evident in an ongoing discussion of theory-informed approaches for bringing about organizational agility. In this article, we claim that incorporating a dialectical perspective of learning would provide a means of understanding the successes and failures of practices aimed at bringing about agility. We consider the maligned dialectic, four fallacious ways of thinking that hinder agility, and the extent to which these can be overcome. As evidence, we present a case of Agile implementation in which one of the authors acted as a consultant and involving a large-scale social change. Considering this from a dialectical perspective, we discuss ways that dysfunction in achieving agility might be reduced through disruptive interventions, such as Agile.

Sailing through the storm: Improvising paradox navigation during a pandemic

Despite rich depictions of paradox navigation strategies, and the recognition that they are fraught with uncertainty, research reveals relatively little about how leaders navigate paradoxical tensions when improvising in the face of highly unpredictable and quickly evolving events. We conducted a narrative study of how French President Macron navigated the tension between the paradoxical poles of “saving lives” and “preserving life as usual” during the pandemic. Our article surfaces three central elements that form a model of improvised paradox navigation in stormy conditions: turning points, fog of uncertainty, and chaotic learning. Our model contributes to paradox theorizing by shedding light on paradox navigation in highly turbulent environments and has implications for management learning and improvisation.

In Praise of Paradox Persistence: Evidence from the Sydney Opera House Project

Organizational paradoxes persist. In their persistence, they resist closure; we demonstrate how, by using an exemplary project, that of the construction of the Sydney Opera House. By analyzing paradoxes encountered in the construction of a notable contemporary architectural project, we discuss how dialogical interactions enable options to emerge in the form of responses that were not previously evident. Engaging paradoxes dialogically requires accepting rather than denying contradictions, meaning that rather than resolving them in favor of one pole or the other, the contradictions remain in play. Monologic interactions—favoring dominant and singular voices, rather than producing consensus—repress dissent, leading to conflict, through suppressing paradox.

Executive competencies and individual ambidexterity: shaping late-career transition to Canada’s recreational cannabis industry

Purpose

The authors contribute to scholarship on motivation for late-career transition, by examining how older executives drew on individual ambidexterity (IA) in the stigmatized, Canadian-licensed recreational cannabis industry.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology utilizes a qualitative method, utilizing semi-structured interviews with 15 late-career executives. Inductive examination of data uncovered subthemes related to motivations for late-career transition, exploring and exploiting competencies, and known and unknown boundary conditions.

Findings

Motivations explained the impetus to join, while ambidexterity allowed executives to employ explorative and exploitive competencies to weather boundary conditions. Late-career transitioning to a stigmatized emerging industry presents an unprecedented mode of bridging employment for older workers.

Research limitations/implications

This small exploratory study of a nascent industry is limited in its generalization across different contexts but relevant to others in cannabis and other emerging industries. Increased focus on Human resources management (HRM) related research on late-career transition due to limited studies and IA.

Practical implications

Cannabis can be a risky employment venture for older workers that may affect future job prospects due to stigmatized views or present devastating financial risk. Older workers with knowledge, experience and skill remain relevant utilizing IA and their ability to manage difficult boundary conditions. Older experienced workers can bridge novel new opportunities before retiring.

Originality/value

The authors incorporated IA, expanding on literature related to boundary conditions in the late-career transition of executives into stigmatized recreational Cannabis. The authors introduce a new mode of bridge employment for late-career workers.

When Does a CEO’s Risk Propensity Drive Exploration in Product Development?

We advance research on the managerial antecedents of exploration by studying personal, organizational, and environmental conditions under which a CEO’s risk propensity shapes a firm’s tendency to explore in product development. Our panel data analysis of 219 firms in the prepackaged software industry reveals that, when a CEO is risk-prone, the CEO’s ability to drive exploration increases with the CEO’s power in the firm, which manifests in tenure, duality, and insider origin. Counter to expectations, however, the firm’s accumulated exploration experience does not reinforce, but rather attenuates the effect of the CEO’s risk propensity on exploration. We attribute this to firms’ quest for balance between exploration and exploitation and the need to counter the CEO’s risk propensity when exploration becomes excessive. Finally, we find that competitive pressure in the firm’s product market reinforces the ability of a CEO who is more risk-prone to garner support for further exploration. Our study advances a dynamic perspective that relates the heterogeneity in firms’ exploration tendencies to the behavioral inclinations of their CEOs.

Experiencing tensions, regulatory focus and employee creativity: the moderating role of hierarchical level

Purpose

This study aims to explore how employees respond to tensions in groups and whether experiencing tensions could spur on their creativity (including radical and incremental creativity). Through integrating the literature on tension and regulatory focus theory, this study develops a model depicting the process from experiencing tensions to creativity via regulatory foci. This study further investigates the moderating effect of employees’ hierarchical level on these processes.

Design/methodology/approach

A two-wave survey was conducted with a sample of 375 employees in China. MPLUS was used to examine the moderated mediation model.

Findings

The results show that experiencing tensions can simultaneously activate employees’ prevention focus and promotion focus, both of which in turn influence radical and incremental creativity. Specifically, prevention focus mediates the negative relationship between experiencing tensions and the two aforementioned types of creativity, and promotion focus mediates the positive relationship between experiencing tensions and radical creativity. Employees’ hierarchical level significantly buffers the link between experiencing tensions and prevention focus.

Practical implications

Organizations should optimize their work design to simplify the role demand of employees in the early stages of their careers. Top-tier employees should be encouraged and empowered to think and act with a paradoxical approach, which can drive them to generate more creative outcomes. Besides, when aiming to discover radical ideas, managers should emphatically cultivate employees’ promotion focus.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the literature on tension through revealing and testing the dual paths resulted by employees’ experiencing tensions. It also advances current research by contrasting the effects of experiencing tensions on different types of creativity.

Resolving Strategic Dilemmas in Ambidextrous Organizations: An Integrated Second-Order Factor Model Perspective

Drawing on relevant literature, this study investigates the process of realizing innovation ambidexterity (IA) by proposing a theoretical model and adopting a specifically integrated mechanism with the aim to resolve strategic dilemmas in ambidextrous organizations (AOs). We analyzed a sample of 136 cross-sectional surveys collected from business managers of 132 medium- and high-tech firms in China by employing a structural equation model combined with moderation analysis to test our hypotheses. Our findings indicate that the second-order theoretical model fits the data well and AO, represented by a higher-order construct, positively affects IA. Instead of structural ambidexterity, balanced contextual ambidexterity and radical performance management can be effectively applied as the factors of the second-order construct; the design comprising balanced contextual ambidexterity and performance management is thus helpful in resolving strategic dilemmas. Our findings demonstrate that Chinese firms, as technology latecomers, are more inclined to conduct near-radical innovation. The risk of exploration crowding out exploitation efforts exists in Chinese high-tech firms. Furthermore, we provides greater insights into the moderating impact of intra-organizational practice on IA based on the fact that performance measurement balance (PMB) did not directly influence the achievement of IA and clarifies the positive role that PMB plays in improving IA.

Revisiting Organizational Design in the Light of Isomorphism and Equifinality: Insights from the Study of Three Major Transformation Projects

This article examines how governance mechanisms were put in place in three organizational transformation projects undertaken in university hospital centers. Our focus is guided by a theoretical discourse on the place of rational choices on organizational design versus the desire to imitate other organizations. The article presents two complementary points of view: a longitudinal study and a recent a posteriori reflection with five key players. A first result highlights efforts invested in the preparation stages and that these nevertheless resulted in comparable performances: hence, the concept of equifinality. However, a second result reveals complementarity between equifinality and institutional isomorphism.

Paradoxical leadership as sensegiving: stimulating change-readiness and change-oriented performance

Purpose

Paradoxical leadership (PL) is an emerging perspective to understand how leaders help followers deal with paradoxical demands. Recently, the positive relationship between PL and follower performance was established. This paper builds on and extends this research by interpreting PL as sensegiving and developing theory about mediation in the relationship between PL and adaptive and proactive performance.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper develops a new measure for PL as sensegiving and provides a test of the mediation model with data from two different sources and two measurement times in a German company.

Findings

Multilevel mediation analysis (N = 154) supports the mediation model.

Originality/value

The paper presents sensegiving about paradox as a core element of PL, which informs the choice of change-readiness as mediator. This study also develops and validates a scale to measure PL in future research.

Embracing Paradox: TMT paradoxical processes as a steppingstone between TMT reflexivity and organizational ambidexterity

Top management teams are crucial in managing the ambidexterity paradox. This endeavour, however, generates cognitive conflicts. Surprisingly, this particular topic has received little attention within the ambidexterity literature. We aim to address this lacuna and, in doing so, extend the paradox literature and the emerging socio-cognitive perspective on ambidexterity. In our hypothesized mediation model, top management teams embrace the exploration-exploitation paradox through reflexivity, then overcome this paradox through paradoxical cognitive processing – the capacity to cognitively differentiate and integrate exploration and exploitation – which finally fosters ambidexterity. We test and find support for our hypotheses using a sample of 335 Dutch and German small and medium enterprises. We end with a discussion on how socio-cognitive factors influence the management of the ambidexterity paradox. In doing so, we refine scholarly understanding of motivating and enabling factors that allow top management teams to deal with the paradoxical tensions surrounding ambidexterity.

Managing the Transition to a Dual Business Model: Tradeoff, Paradox, and Routinized Practices

Building on an in-depth study of a manufacturing company’s shift from a product to a product-service business model, we explore how single-focus companies transition to a dual orientation. Although companies generally use highly sophisticated practices to manage a dual orientation, those that transition to one successfully start with less sophisticated practices. Early on, the use of simple tradeoff practices, which maintain the product and service logics, helps single-focus companies explore the emergent tensions that their transition to a dual orientation causes. Conversely, adopting more sophisticated practices at this early stage overwhelms them. At a later stage, these companies’ growing understanding of the tensions allows them to experiment with more comprehensive paradox practices that transcend the product and service logics. Conversely, maintaining simple practices at this stage prevents them from gaining the solution experience required to complete the transition. The evolutionary process culminates in sophisticated routinized practices that institutionalize recurrent tensions’ solution, while allowing for further experimentation to deal with new tensions. The different practices’ appropriate sequence and pacing during the evolutionary process facilitate companies’ transition to a dual orientation.

Non-naïve organizational positivity through a generative paradox pedagogy

Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS), with positivity as a core conceptual component, is a major innovation in recent decades in management and organizational studies. Just as organization is an inherently paradox laden process, so too, we argue, is positivity. Yet in classrooms and in practice, POS is mostly taught in a manner that accepts only one side of the paradox, that which, at first glance, appears positive. Against such linear approaches we propose another possibility: teaching positivity through a pedagogy of generative paradoxes emergent from creatively harmonizing the energy of competing and interdependent positive and negative tensions. In the process we extend the notion of generative paradox as discussed in paradox literature by embracing the notion of generativity as discussed in POS theorizing where it is associated with organizational processes that facilitate outcomes of collective flourishing, abundance, wellbeing, and virtue. Our proposed three-part generative paradox pedagogy contributes to the literature on POS, organizational paradox, and management learning.

Generic Paradoxical Tensions, Appraisals, Work Motivation, and Performance: Insights From a Weekly Repeated-Measures Study

Drawing on the paradox theory, the author developed a theoretical model of appraisal–motivational responses to generic paradoxical tensions. The author postulated that paradoxical tensions are appraised both as a challenge and as a threat, in turn prompting mixed effects, positive and negative, on performance. The dual effects of paradoxical tensions are explained by the intermittent role of motivation toward work and a dispositional boundary condition—individual' adaptability—cross-situation variability of behaviors. The results from an eight-wave weekly repeated measures study spanning a period of 2 months (N = 178, total observations = 1,355) provided support for the proposed theoretical model. By illuminating the nuanced intraindividual psychological process, the present study brings forward novel insights on cognitive appraisals and motivations of paradoxical tensions advancing microfoundation of the paradox research.

Toward understanding three phases of individual responses to paradox

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to further paradox research at the individual level through applying a framework of three phases of individual response to paradox – recognition, understanding and behaviour.

Design/methodology/approach

Critical and integrative review of previous studies of individual responses to paradox.

Findings

The role of individual understanding is limited in extant research on individual responses to paradox. Individual understanding tends to be equated with behaviour, and thus knowledge of understanding is not differentiated enough, neither is the link between understanding and behaviour sufficiently developed.

Research limitations/implications

The review does not consider the relationship to interactional, organisational and environmental contexts. The recommendation for future research is to explore individual responses to paradox more entirely, to provide an adequate ground for extending paradox theory across individual and broader levels of analysis.

Originality/value

The review contributes to paradox theory by separating individual understanding and then providing a framework in which recognition, understanding and behaviour can be reintegrated in new ways. In addition to more accurate discernment of individual understanding and of combinations of responses across phases, the three-phase framework facilitates investigation of more intricate influences across phases and paths of evolution of such responses over time.

A Transparadox Process of Decision Making

Decision makers inevitably face a variety of tensions when managing strategic change. Research from organization and strategy perspectives, such as paradox and organizational learning, has offered useful but limited insight into the systematic mindset and thinking processes involved in decision making. We draw on theoretical and philosophical foundations of the transparadox perspective and related theories to build a dynamic process cycle of transparadoxical decision making. Three interrelated dimensions make up our model: (1) Transparadox Information Navigation, which includes embracing oppositional tendencies, syncretic focus, and creative transcendence; (2) Transparadox Contextual Consideration, characterized by prudent precision and recognizing the flux of temporality and spatiality; and (3) Transparadox Integration, which comprises design-type integration and exploration-type integration. We then present propositions on the interdependent and reinforcing mechanism among the three dimensions. Our work expands the paradox literature with specific mindset dimensions and constituent elements, connecting paradox research with the cognitive perspective by adding dynamic, cyclical processes to paradox cognition study.

The Eastern construction of paradoxical cognitive framework and its antecedents: a Yin–Yang balancing perspective

Purpose

In the face of external paradoxical requirements, the cognitive framework of managers and employees use to perceive, interpret and reconstruct information is important to ease anxiety and improve job performance. The Yin-Yang balancing of eastern philosophical thought is particularly good at explaining and predicting changes and conflict environments. For this reason, this study aims to propose the eastern construction of the paradoxical cognitive framework based on the Yin-Yang balancing theory and its antecedent framework.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper contrasts the similarity and differences between Chinese and Western philosophy’s thoughts on paradoxes. On this basis, the eastern construction of the paradoxical cognitive framework is proposed. Then, the paper puts forward the antecedent framework of managers’ cognitive framework and employees’ paradoxical cognitive framework.

Findings

This paper proposes the eastern construction of the paradoxical cognitive framework includes the following three dimensions: the unity-in-diversity of paradoxical elements, the asymmetric balance of paradoxical elements and mutual transformation of paradoxical elements. In addition, this paper proposes an antecedent framework of the eastern construction of the paradoxical cognitive framework – the paradoxical requirement of organizational environment exerts a direct impact on managers’ and employees’ paradoxical cognitive framework; managers’ paradoxical cognitive framework has a positive impact on paradoxical leadership; paradoxical leadership exerts an indirect impact on employees’ paradoxical cognitive framework through the collective paradoxical cognitive framework; paradoxical leadership directly affects employees’ paradoxical cognitive framework.

Research limitations/implications

This paper focuses on comparing the similarities and differences of the individual paradoxical cognitive framework in Chinese and Western cultures and proposes the eastern construction of the paradoxical cognitive framework and its antecedent framework. Future research needs to further verify the theoretical framework proposed in this paper.

Originality/value

This paper makes a detailed comparison of the paradox views in Chinese and Western philosophy. It is the first to propose the eastern construction of the paradoxical cognitive framework and its antecedent framework, laying a theoretical foundation for future empirical research.

Crazy, stupid, disobedience: The dark side of paradoxical leadership

In organizations, paradoxes are not only an expression of growing dynamism and complexity. Leaders can also generate them intentionally by means of double-bind rhetoric in order to exercise power. In double-bind situations, followers are trapped in a paradox: they have no possibility of doing what is right, but can always be made responsible by their leaders for wrong decisions. To create awareness of this dark side of paradoxical leadership, the article builds and elaborates a theoretical typology of double binds in organizations and discusses it in terms of the introduced concept of paratoxical leadership. The article further explains how paratoxical leadership leads to dysfunctional outcomes for the individual and the organization and discusses ways to successfully prevent and resolve instances of paratoxical leadership. In this way, the article shows how leadership power, or more precisely, the abuse of leadership power, in organizations can be explained from a paradox perspective.

Opening the Black Box of Benefits Management in the Context of Projects

Benefits management has recently gained in popularity but remains difficult to implement and conduct in organizations. Inspired by the practice perspective and building on an exploratory study, we reveal that defining benefits is a complex task, as the concept of benefit is understood in a variety of ways. We also expose the evolving nature of benefits management, highlighting that benefits management is far from a linear activity. Our study uncovers some of the social and political aspects of benefits management, which have up until now been neglected and may be connected to the challenges of this activity.

Neither-And Thinking: Understanding James March's Unique Solution to Paradox

In this article, I propose a typology of thinking pattern that helps us understand the variants of the so-called ‘both/and thinking’ shared by many organizational paradox scholars in the West and China. The variants are distinguished by the ‘primary thinking-secondary thinking’ structure between the combined elementary thinking. One of the variants, i.e., Neither-And thinking, is associated with James March's discussion of logic of consequences and logic of appropriateness. An examination of March's writings reveals an additional ‘principle-practice’ structure underlining March's unique solution to paradox. Incorporating the ‘principle-practice’ structure into the proposed typology in turn helps us better understand the other variants of ‘both/and thinking’ such as ambidexterity, contingency, and Zhong-Yong. The typology shows March's Neither-And solution is unique because it embraces a primary neither/nor thinking while all the other variants do not. To demonstrate the value of March's unique solution, I apply Neither-And thinking characterized by the ‘principle-practice’ relationship to paradoxes outside organization studies, e.g., in Deconstruction, Buddhism, and quantum physics. The wide application of Neither-And thinking implies that James March's unique solution to organizational paradox may have provided a key to understanding paradox in general.

Inter-Organizational Paradox Management: How national business systems affect responses to paradox along a global value chain

This study discusses the relationship between inter-organizational paradox management, national business systems and global value chains. Using case study evidence from a global value chain in the footwear industry (in Germany and China), we analyse how different businesses in the chain responded to the paradoxical tension arising from the competing demands to provide a living wage to workers and to uphold financial performance. Our findings highlight organizational responses to this paradox along the value chain, showing how these responses were shaped by the interplay of different types of pressures exerted by national business systems and the value chain itself. While these pressures were aligned in the German part of the chain, they were not aligned on the Chinese side. The study makes two contributions: (1) we develop a taxonomy outlining how the alignment of different types of pressures influences whether organizations choose either proactive or defensive paradox management; and (2) we argue that theorizing the impacts of cross-national distance on paradox management can be enhanced by adopting a multidimensional approach to institutional variety that extends beyond culture-based arguments.

Dialectics and dilemmas arising from Covid-19 immunity testing: presenting a workforce management paradox

Purpose

Covid-19 has caused many businesses to rethink their short- and potentially long-term workforce operations. The use of lateral flow serology can provide a clinically convenient approach for the assessment of prior infection with Covid-19. However, its widespread adoption in organisations seeking to use it to test for workforce immunity is controversial and confusing. This paper aims to explore the paradoxical dilemmas and dialectics immunity workforce testing creates.

Design/methodology/approach

This study involved capturing the ethnographical participation of a chief executive officer (CEO) dealing with the experience of managing the outcomes of Covid-19 workforce immunity testing. The aim was to take a snapshot in time of the CEO's empirical world, capturing their lived experiences to explore how management actions resulting from Covid-19 immunity testing can played out.

Findings

Providing staff with immunity tests at first glance appears sensible, decent and a caring action to take. Nevertheless, once such knowledge is personalised by employees, they can, through dialectic dialogue, feel disadvantaged and harbour feelings of unfairness. Subsequently, this paper suggests that immunity testing may only serve to raise awareness and deepen the original management dilemma of whether testing is a worthwhile activity.

Originality/value

This paper aims to be amongst the first works to empirically explore the workforce management challenges that arise within small businesses within the service sector following the completion of Covid-19 immunity testing of their staff. It seeks to achieve this via utilising the robust theoretical framework of the paradox theory to examine Covid-19's impact upon small business workforce management thinking and practice.

Teams in the wild are not extinct, but challenging to research: A guide for conducting impactful team field research with 10 recommendations and 10 best practices

While there is no shortage of calls for research to study management concepts within organizations, there is far too little guidance on how to accomplish this feat. Conducting research in the field is especially important within the domain of organizational team research. Accordingly, we seek to provide an understanding of the current state of the organizational team field research literature and highlight recommendations and best practices. As such, we identified 10 recommendations and 10 best practices through three methods: (1) a literature review, (2) a survey of individuals who have published team field research, as well as some of the most impactful scholars investigating organizational team phenomenon, and (3) a set of interviews with practitioners in positions that can grant field access to researchers. By implementing this multi-pronged approach, we were able to incorporate multiple stakeholder voices so as to fully understand the value and ideal process for scientist-practitioner endeavors.