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PublicationBoth/and approaches and vicious cycles: -a process study of navigating paradox during COVID-19( 2023-07-08)This paper seeks to explain why a both/and approach can lead to a vicious cycle instead of a virtuous one as paradox literature suggests. The study draws on data from a longitudinal process study of how a hospital navigated the paradox of treating patients during the COVID-19 pandemic with a both/and approach that resulted in reduced treatment capacity. By analyzing the events unfolding over time, I use a circular logic and induce a systemic model to explain how and why a both/and approach can lead to a vicious cycle. The explanation lies in two feedback loops, which are the effects of a both/and approach on resource scarcity and on affective conflicts among organizational members. The proposed model advances existing explanations on why a both/and approach can lead to a vicious or a virtuous cycle. The model underscores a shift in paradox scholarship to a processual understanding that accounts for effects on the conditions that surface paradox. These insights help organizations tap the creative potential of paradox and avoid the outcome irony that aiming to balance contradictory demands reduces the possibility to do so over time.
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PublicationNavigating a pragmatic paradox -a process study of change in a nursing unit PROS-076, presented at 14 th PROS, June 18-21 2023, Chania (Greece)( 2023-06-17)This paper explores how members of a subordinate unit navigate a so-called pragmatic paradox. It is a situation in which actors find themselves lacking agency to navigate paradoxical demands. Drawing on a longitudinal case study I investigate how the studied nursing department regains agency by establishing third spaces. Third spaces are settings of social interactions, in which actors can enunciate, reflect, and address contradictory issues. The proposed process model explains the establishment of third spaces. This process of how actors can regain agency advances current approaches to navigate pragmatic paradoxes. Furthermore, the paper contributes to relating cognitive approaches with social interaction within the paradox lens. In addition, the paper complements literature on third spaces which tend to focus on their internal dynamics by explaining the emergence and maintainance of third spaces over time.
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PublicationAccomplishing paradox latency with a coordinating routine : a process perspective on accomplishing stability in a pluralistic organization( 2015-06-24)This paper investigates how the paradox of differentiation and integration becomes latent through a routine by which the relatively autonomous actors move forward organization wide issues. The paradox lens provides a promising perspective to explore pluralistic organizations. While it argues that paradoxes are integral to organizations it assumes that they remain latent without addressing how paradox latency is assomplished. By using routine dynamics, this study investigates the routinely and situative enactment of the paradox of differentiation and integration. The single research setting of a qualitative longitudinal case study shows how paradox latency is accomplished within the executive board during an initiative of integrating two hospitals. Accomplishment of paradox latency reveals different patterns which are integral to a coordinating routine by which this hospital moves forward organization wide issues despite its plurality. This coordinating routine and the paradox of differentiation and integration form a duality which explains how a pluralistic organization achieves stability. The proposed duality further advances the paradox lens by attending to paradox latency. In addition, the proposed duality addresses the current interest in routine dynamics on relating groups of routines.
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Publication"Bootstrapping" to handle the decision-making paradox( 2013-06-20)Many scholars increasingly suggest adopting a paradox lens to study organizations. They consider paradoxes as integral to organizations (Clegg, Vieira da Cunha, & Pina e Cunha, 2002; Ford & Backoff, 1988; Lewis, 2000; Luescher & Lewis, 2008), in which paradox is defined as an operation that implies the conditions for its possibility and impossibility (Ortmann, 2004). These works, however, remain vague on what "integral" means. Do organizations need to handle paradoxes or are they manifestations of handling paradoxes themselves? We argue that organizations represent manifestations of paradoxes and develop practices of handling paradoxes. To illustrate this claim, we draw on an in-depth case study on decision-making in a pluralistic context. First, the study demonstrates that a paradox underlies decision-making in pluralistic contexts: The autonomy of organizational members who pursue diverse interests requires decisions which span professional boundaries; at the same time, the autonomy of organizational members impedes such decisions (Bate, 2000; Ericson, 2001; Glouberman & Mintzberg, 2001; Jarzabkowski & Fenton, 2006; Lozeau, Langley, & Denis, 2002). Second, results from a decision premise (Luhmann, 2000) analysis show that organizational members apply a "bilateral-situative" decision-making practice, a both/and approach which both acknowledges their autonomy and enables decisions across boundaries. A decision-premise focuses on who decides on what, when, and how within an organization. A decision-premise specifies what an organization regards as "organizational". To argue our claim theoretically, we draw on the concept of "bootstrapping" by American sociologist Barry Barnes (Barnes, 1983) which addresses the issue of self-reference in reproducing social phenomena. "Bootstrapping" means that ongoing flows of activities, like actions, communications or decisions, pass through a label - like "organizational" - that filters activities as to whether they belong to the label, and then attaches this label to the activity so that it counts as expressing the label, i.e. as belonging to or expressing "organizational". Such a label like "organizational" allows to distinguishing what is organizational, while all other activities are disregarded. The label in turn emerges through this ongoing flow of activities, in which the process consists of activities that result endogenously from the same process as well as from exogenous inputs. "Bootstrapping" conceptualizes the way of how decisions and decision-premises relate with one another, either in a way that reproduced the label or undermines it over time. Our empirical results exemplify the former, i.e. the reproduction that allows handling the paradox of decision-making in a pluralistic setting. Thus, we argue that a pluralistic organization is a manifestation of a paradox, rather than having a paradox. The latter alternative in which the label is undermined over time, would involve a continuous change of the label or an episodic attempt of altering it. This study speaks to three bodies of literature: First, our study speaks to pluralistic organization by arguing that they are manifestations of paradox and that they developed specific ways of handling them. Second, the empirical results exemplify an organizational perspective on paradoxes, whereas most paradox literature focuses in individuals and groups. Third, bootstrapping offers an insight into how two components of a duality relate over time through feedback. This conceptualization complements the existing view of duality (Farjoun, 2010; Feldman & Pentland, 2003). These works elaborate on what one component serves for the other component, thus representing a functional perspective. In comparison, our conceptualization of bootstrapping with decision-premises as the label captures not only such functions but also opens the pathway to pursue the opposite, a disfunctional relation. Bootstrapping allows explaining reproducing and changing a temporal social order as a self-referential process.
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PublicationOrganizing Awareness and Responsiveness to handle the Catch 22 of organizational change : Taking a process perspective on merging two nursing departments(Academy of Management, 2011-08-15)Handling paradoxes is important to manage change. Taking a process perspective, I explore the paradox of change processes that emerges when weaving a "new" organizing into the "old" one. The single case study within a hospital demonstrates six communicative patterns to handle the catch 22 of organizational change. They share awareness and responsiveness which relates the poles of "old" and "new" organizing and provides the conceptual contribution of the paper. This organizational view complements the existing insights that mainly focus on individual and group strategies to handle paradoxes. The study suggests practitioners to organize awareness and responsiveness by structuring communication. Doing so enables those involved to observe the change process within the specific context and as it unfolds
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PublicationCommunicative Dynamic to Reconstruct Paradoxes in Organizations(EGOS European Group for Organizational Studies, 2010-07-01)The paper explores the question of how paradoxes become reproduced in daily organizing practice. Based on a single longitudinal case study of changing a nursing department, we demonstrate not only historically how a specific paradox emerged, and was unfolded successfully. But more so, and inspired by social systems theory, we use a the concept of communicative dynamic to depict how the paradox was reproduced within the daily organizing in which it is situated locally. In our view, the communicative dynamic provides a promising approach to explore paradoxes within organizations for academics and practitioners alike. It contributes to the understanding of paradoxes as integral to organizational life to pursue both/and approaches and encourages a paradoxical lens on organizational phenomena such as change processes.
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PublicationManaging the Catch-22 of Organizational Change Processes - A system theoretical perspective on communicative practices( 2008-06-05)The paper explores how complex organizational change processes can be succesfully handled. The fundamental challenge is to unfold the operative paradox which systematically emerges in the contradiction of current and future organizing. The paper is based on a longitudinal, single case study in a Swiss acute hospital over a period of eight years. Taking a system theoretical perspective, we identified six interrelated communicative practices to handle the paradox within the organization. These practices point to "structuring communication" as the relating principle to handle the two opposing poles involved in paradoxes of changing.
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PublicationParadoxien im Wandel - Wandel als Paradoxie : Beispiel Krankenhaus(Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013)
