Learning paradox: Antecedents and mechanisms of paradox mindset development

Organizations face multiple conflicting requirements such as exploration versus exploitation (March, 1991), profit versus social responsibility (Margolis & Walsh, 2003) or collaboration versus control (Sundaramurthy & Lewis, 2003). As complexity, global competition and fast-paced technological cycles gain prevalence, these tensions are becoming increasingly salient (Lewis, 2000). Following the insight that “leaders` responses to these tensions may be a fundamental determinant of an organization`s fate”, paradox theory has developed a rich description of such tensions (Smith & Lewis, 2011, p. 381), which are characterized by “persistent contradictions between interdependent elements” (Schad et al., 2016, p.6). The ability of individual employees (e.g. Gibson & Birkinshaw, 2004), managers (e.g. Mom, van den Bosch & Volberda, 2009) and executives (e.g. Smith & Tushman, 2005) to manage such paradoxical demands is an important micro-foundation of the organizational capability to do so. Still, research on the individual level remains scarce (Schad et al., 2016). Recent paradox research found enduring differences in individuals` proclivity and ability to manage paradoxes (Miron-Spektor et al., 2018). This antecedent of paradoxical cognition was framed as paradox mindset and the authors provided evidence for its moderating role for paradoxical tensions’ performance effects (Miron-Spektor et al., 2018).
Paradox mindset is thus an important antecedent for paradoxical cognition and the management of paradoxical tensions. However, we know little about the antecedents or evolution of paradox mindset itself: Can it be developed and if so, how? “If paradoxical thinking can be taught, we need to clarify what might be some of the best ways to do so” (Schad et al., 2016, p. 41). Accordingly, we build in this study on psychological mindset theory (Dweck, 2006) and argue that paradox mindset can indeed be developed through informational (e.g. Blackwell, Trzesniewski & Dweck, 2007) and motivational (e.g. Muller & Dweck, 1998) approaches. Informational approaches refer to changes in someone’s basic convictions about the world. These may be developed, for example, through role modelling of a paradoxical leader on higher levels in the organizations. Motivational approaches, on the other hand, refer to shaping mindset through feedback and reward processes, which are again executed by the leaders in an organization. Accordingly, we propose that paradoxical leadership is a particularly suitable candidate to develop paradox mindset since it works through both approaches (cf. Anderson, Boaler & Dieckmann, 2018).
We draw on primary data from 199 employees from two Central European companies to empirically test our hypotheses: We find strong empirical support for our prediction that paradoxical leadership leads to paradox mindset. However, this effect is fully mediated by the individuals’ experiences with engaging in paradoxical tasks (i.e., individual ambidextrous behavior). This suggest that paradoxical management, paradoxical behavior, and paradox mindset are inherently linked to one another in a recursive, self-reinforcing feedback loop. Our results have important implications both for theory and practice. For theory, we identify to our knowledge the first antecedents of paradox mindset and their respective mechanisms. In addition, we contribute to emerging paradox research focused on a process perspective and learning feedbacks between paradoxical management and paradoxical capabilities. For practice, we identify practical ways how leaders may increase the paradoxical capabilities of their followers.