Managing the grand challenges of a paradox society: Toward a paradox management theory of reflexive modernization

The organizational literature offers important insights into innovative responses to grand challenges that create synergies between growth goals and managing grand challenges. However, organizational theory and practice share taken-for-granted assumptions such as the belief in inexhaustible growth and technology-based problem solving. These assumptions may have been one factor that led to the grand challenges of current times as unintended consequences and may produce new ones. Applying paradox theory and theory of reflexive modernization to the organizational literature on grand challenges, we reflect on taken-for-granted assumptions of theory and practice and develop a model of managing the grand challenges of a paradox society. The model explains how organizational and societal responses to grand challenges enact a new paradoxical dynamic between intended positive and unintended negative consequences that appear at the macro level. The model advances the understanding of the dark side of strategic paradoxes, dynamics of knotted paradoxes, unintended consequences, and taken-for-granted assumptions of responses to grand challenges. We suggest a complementary direction to current research on grand challenge.