Sotiris: I found myself being hard put to answer your question, because you did not actually provide the contradictory statements and the event in question.  Some people like discussing abstract definitions.  Field researchers often find it more fruitful to describe what actually took place up front. Imagine a work situation where there is an in-group and an out-group.  A change process is undertaken. One member of the in-group talks about how he was consulted, contributed and the change was participative and very useful.  A member of the out-group complains that no one consulted him or his friends.  He says this is just another example of how a few people with power make decisions around here, and you know what happens when power is concentrated in the hands of a few people.  Is this scenario an example of a paradox, or is this simply a common scenario one encounters when there are in-groups and out-groups? Differences could also surface from one person being in a line position and another person being in a staff position. I would not personally classify line-staff  differences in views or conflicts as a paradox, even if there was some team or family rhetoric.  Gouldner (1954a, 1954b) many years ago described the "paradox of control."  Managers often try to exert greater control via formal control mechanisms (rules, procedures, monitoring methods, discipline, etc.).  This often produces some compliance and some resistance.  Both of these reactions encourage the leaders to implement more formal control measures to get more compliance and squash the resistance. This can be a self reinforcing and self defeating process.  As the leaders try to exert greater control, the subjects get more and more irritated and alienated..  Power can actually slip away, which is the paradox of control.  Have you heard of the "uniqueness paradox?" Some people will say organizational stories have unique aspects.  Nevertheless, some researchers have found common themes in these stories (Martin, Feldman, Hatch, and Sitkin, 1983).   In both of these well known paradoxes, it is not clear to me that it was conflicting statements by people from an organization that made the paradox apparent.  It is sometimes the researcher who identifies the paradox.  Martin (1992, 2002) has described "the fragmentation perspective." This encompasses ironies, contradictions, paradoxes, and shifting political coalitions.  Gabriel (2000) has provided some different versions of organization stories that struck me as also possibly relevant to your situation. Rather than getting too caught up in definitions, you might spend your time more productively drafting a description of the situation that you encountered.  Based on having done fieldwork for a long period of time, I doubt it is only two people who saw the situation differently. Why is this situation interesting to you?  Why was it interesting and important to your participants?  This is the sort of thing that will interest your readers. Good luck, Bruce

References

Gabriel, Y. 2000. Storytelling in organizations: Facts, fictions, and fantasies.  New York: Oxford University Press.

Gouldner, A. W. (1954a), Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy, The Free Press, New York.

Gouldner, A. W. (1954b), Wildcat Strke: A Study in Worker-Management Relationships.  New York: Harper & Row.

Martin, J., M. S. Feldman, M. J. Hatch and S. B. Sitkin. 1983. The uniqueness paradox in organizational stories. Administrative Science Quarterly 28: 438-453.

Martin, J. (1992), Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives, New York: Oxford University Press.

 Martin, J. (2002), Organization Culture: Mapping the Terrain, Sage, Thousand Oaks.

Dear Bruce,

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond to my question with such great detail.

Perhaps I should have given an example. To give you an idea about my paper, it is about exploring innovation paradoxes in a less ambidextrous organization where there is an imbalance between the dual emphases of exploration and exploitation. and to offer you an example of contradictory statements - here is two statements made by two MDs of the same organization - (one of them had left the organization at the time of this interview):

MD1: ‘the management of the business was such that was so big that in my view, rightly or wrongly, the quality had disappeared…and it was a big machine...and the churn…and it spent more time navel gazing and looking inwards than it did looking outwards…both in terms of looking out for client, but also in terms of best practice, in terms of, being at the forefront knowledge wise of what was happening’

MD2: ‘He (MD1) wanted to take over the world, spent more of his time talking to people about taking over the world than actually doing the job of work’

The way I have interpreted this is that MD1 suggests that there was a lack of breakthrough projects and the organization was failing to look out for client delivering work of questionable quality. Therefore the organization was looking too much inwards, an overemphasis on exploitation at the expense of exploration. On the other hand, MD2 described the situation with an opposite view - he believes that his ex-partner overemphasized exploration at the expense of exploitation; looking too much outward that he was failing to do the actual work of managing the organization. I relate this contradiction to strategic intent paradox (Andriopoulos and Lewis, 2009) where the organization should work towards both exploitation - projects that generate profit - and exploration - breakthrough projects that enhance reputation. In my case,I think in this organization each MD put an emphasis on one side of this duality, one on exploration and one on exploitation side. So I see a different interpretation of the same event/situation (Poole and Van de Van, 1989) and a contradiction manifested by statements made by two participants. So my question was whether this contradiction/different interpretation could be framed as paradox?

I will have a look at the paradox of power - this is very interesting because the senior management of that organization was giving free rein to designers leading to lack of process which was causing more problems.Sso it was the exact opposite of how you have described the paradox of power. I will also have a look at the uniqueness paradox you have mentioned.

I think this organization and the data I have is very interesting and there is a lot that would be interesting to the reader, I just wanted to ensure I was on the right path theoretically.  

Thank you very much again for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate it.

Best wishes, Sotiris.

Soltris:  I found your second text much more interesting than the first. I thought of the following passage from one of my draft papers (Fortado, 2015):

"During the Human Relations era, a number of common frictions between different parts of the management hierarchy were documented. For instance, some salespeople listened to customer demands and commitments were then made to provide special conditions. These promises made things much more difficult for the organization’s production and service departments (Gardner and Moore 1964). Administrators in these branches preferred more uniform and less costly practices. Ultimately, one would expect the leadership to do what was more profitable. Only rough estimates can really be made, because an unknown number of customers may later ask for similar special treatment"

I also pulled the following quote out of a draft book chapter that I wrote:

"In order to achieve organizational ends (e.g. profits, productivity, and quality), certain means are adopted. For example, meeting will be held, procedures are created, and reports come to be required. Over time, these means may take on a life of their own. People tend to lose sight of the original ends. The means become an end in themselves. People can fill their calendars with meetings, issue many “red tape” procedures and consume massive amounts of time with reports. Developing such extreme habits detracts from the original ends. This is the paradox of consequences (Watson, 1994: 137)."

It seemed to me that MD1 was roughly talking about this sort of thing taking place. One question I had when I read your short description was did the organization have any relevant corporate culture statements (shared values, mission, or vision statements) that related to the issues raised?  Did the leadership favor one position or the other?  Of course, these two might have been the leaders. As I understand it, you believe both people think they know what it takes for the organization to succeed, and by doing only the one thing the person favors, the proper balance in effort needed to really succeed is lacking. Both failed to see the relevance of what the other was saying and no effort was made to find a middle position between the two.  Both believed he was right and the other was wrong.  Can you explore how others there feel about these matters? I had not previously seen the "strategic intent paradox."  If you find unique aspects to your case, it would help in terms of publishing your work later. The organization you talked about is apparently following the more recent trend to delegate and hopefully gain greater control by doing so than was the case in the old "paradox of control."  Evidently, following this less structured path may not be an entirely trouble free trek to success.  Good luck, Bruce

References

Gardner, Burleigh B. and David G.  Moore. 1964. Human relations in industry: Organizational and administrative behavior, Fourth edition.  Homewood, IL: Irwin.

Watson, T. J. (1994). In Search of Management. London and New York: Routledge.

Soltris: The reference below (Wendt, 2001) deals with the general subject you are interested in. I cited this book in the same draft book chapter as I cited Watson (1994) above.  I do not recall this text in great detail.  At my age, my memory is not what it was when I was young.

     I took a three hour nap after I wrote the above message.  A couple of things came to me when I woke up.  One was if you have found an undiscovered paradox, you need a catchy title.  Perhaps you could call it the "combatant paradox," if both people feel his/her way is the right way, no effort made to find middle ground, and you can show better balance would have produced better results.  Another thought I had was you might have found a paradox within a paradox.  For example, perhaps you found the paradox of consequences within a situation that was the strategic intent paradox. Since I am not familiar with the strategic intent paradox or the rest of the in-depth information about your situation, you will have to decide if these were good dreams or nightmares.  For example, you did not really develop what MD2 had to say in great detail.

     I have encountered a number of examples of the paradox of control in my own fieldwork.  In general, finding additional examples of old ideas does not get as strong a reaction from editors and reviewers as something new and unexpected.

I hope some of what I wrote helps you, Bruce

Reference

Wendt, R. F. (2001).  The paradox of empowerment: Suspended power and the possibility of resistance.  Westport, CT: Praeger.

Dear Bruce,

Thank you very much for your answers and references provided. Indeed, I have access to organizational documentation and they relate to these issues - very good thought! I will also have a look at the references you have provided. Thank you very much for your time. Best wishes from rainy England. Sotiris.

Planning and leading often persist as paradoxical requirements in organizations. Very possible for tensions presented as a paradox, as interpretations of findings. Often when we step back to grasp the larger picture.Some have called it the paradox of control.Others call it a tightly-coupled system.For instance, when organizations seek to control or micromanage, through quantifiable means while ignoring the human, organic realities of social dynamics, the ever-tightening grip only worsens the situation, like jello oozing between the fingers when we attempt to mould it into a ball by applying brute force.

The paradox of thrift, manifested in greater cost-cutting, often ends up incurring higher costs. So for instance, builders end up doing more harm to the environment (the tropics), by using glass (to utilize natural lighting/epitomize transparency) instead of conventional walls. Because the resulting stress on centralized air-conditioning complexes actually translate to higher maintenance costs in the long run. Not to mention the lost of countless hours of focused attention due to distractions and privacy concerns.

Tensions may not be entirely bad, in the context of dialectics. Sometimes leading to counter-intuitive lessons if heeded.In this instance, that minimal supervision and a closed system is sometimes the best homeostatic option.

Those who don't plan, plan to fail. Those who plan much, must be prepared to fail more often.