Paradox and Contradiction in Organizations: Introducing Two Articles on Paradox and Contradiction in Organizations

For the first time, this volume of the Academy of Management Annals features two articles that we paired together to present complementary perspectives on a common theme. Schad, Lewis, Raisch, and Smith (2016) review research on paradox theory in management science, and Putnam, Fairhurst, and Banghart (2016) cover research on contradictions, dialectics, and paradoxes in organizations. Why take a chance (and devote so much space) by publishing two contiguous articles on one general topic? We are trying this experiment in the hope that readers can learn more about the topic by reading the two articles back to back rather than separately.

Together, these two articles advocate for the fundamental importance and pervasive nature of paradox and contradiction in organizational life. Needless to say, both author teams are experts on the meta-theoretical concepts of paradox and contradiction. Yet in reviewing literature and making their claims, both articles pull on a remarkably wide range of prior research, covering studies on technology, routines, identity, power, culture, structuration, work-life balance, creativity, and much more. For some of those studies reviewed, paradox or contradiction is the central subject—but for many other studies reviewed, paradox or contradiction is just one of several themes. Hence, a key challenge for these articles has been to reveal the underlying structures of how paradox and contradiction concepts are used across this hyper-diverse landscape.

The articles can be briefly comparison-sketched at both surface level and deep level. On the surface, while both papers cover paradox in organization studies, Schad and colleagues focus on the management research tradition, while Putnam and colleagues broaden their focus to also include contradiction and dialectic concepts, and they cover a wider range of the social sciences. Methodologically, both papers make systematic efforts to identify relevant literature, but they take differing approaches: Schad and colleagues start with four seminal early papers and then identify the later works that cited them, while Putnam and colleagues start with a broad keyword search and then winnow their set of papers thematically (the resulting lists overlap by less than 30%).

The two also take different approaches to organizing the literature. For example, as Schad and colleagues focus on the paradox concept, they use a framework that features themes such as categories of paradox, ways that paradox becomes salient, levels of analysis, and positive and negative outcomes of paradox. Putnam and colleagues start from a different vantage, identifying five major theoretical traditions in the social sciences (e.g. postmodernism), in order to contrast the ways paradox and contradiction have been used in each of those traditions. Some common elements emerge between the frameworks, such as virtuous and vicious cycles, and a systematic consideration of responses to paradox—but there are more differences than similarities.

At a deeper level, the papers reflect varied epistemological tastes. Both articles reflect a serious appreciation for multiple philosophies of science. Yet Schad and colleagues see the potential for a cumulative science here, or what they term a “meta-theory of paradox,” that is of potentially wide applicability for management researchers. They indicate this meta-theory can be advanced through a future research program that includes work on individual cognition and the social aggregation process that produces organization-level phenomena. In contrast to that relatively top-down approach, Putnam and colleagues emphasize more of a bottom-up vision, arguing for a “constitutive approach” in which paradox (or any other social or organizational phenomena) must be understood to emerge locally through language use and social interaction. In this tradition, they suggest paradox research moves forward through discursive studies of interaction episodes, with thick descriptions of time and context, and careful attention to the communication of emotions. This latter approach is not necessarily incompatible with a desire for cumulative science, but it probably fits better with an eclectic vision of social science that resists convergence or ready cumulation.

For those engaged in paradox and contradiction research in management, these paired articles offer a wealth of detailed insight. And for those new to this domain, these articles offer accessible ideas about how to incorporate paradox thinking into other areas of research. Even readers with just a passing interest may find their thinking provoked on a set of concepts that seem to be of fundamental human interest. After all, tensions, contradictions, and paradoxes are basic to human narrative, often thought to lie at the heart of good storytelling. Indeed, a common account of how to write a captivating social science article is essentially to construct and then resolve an apparent contradiction or paradox found in scholarly thinking (e.g. Van Maanen, 1995). Hence insights that help to demystify the true nature of these concepts should hold appeal for insiders and outsiders alike.