Learning Paradox: A Mediation Model of Paradox Mindset Development

Organizations face multiple conflicting requirements such as exploration versus exploitation, profit versus social responsibility, or collaboration versus control. The ability of organizational members to manage such paradoxical demands is an important micro-foundation of the organizational capability to do so. Paradox mindset is an important antecedent for the management of paradoxical tensions. However, we know little about the antecedents or evolution of paradox mindset itself. Accordingly, we build on psychological mindset theory and argue that paradox mindset can indeed be developed through informational and motivational approaches. 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.