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Early paradox research in organization theory contained a remarkable breadth of inspirations from outside disciplines. We wanted to know more about where early scholarship found inspiration to create what has since become paradox theory. To shed light on this, we engaged seminal paradox scholars in conversations: asking about their past experiences drawing from outside disciplines and their views on the future of paradox theory. These conversations surfaced several themes of past and future inspirations: (1) understanding complex phenomena; (2) drawing from related disciplines; (3) combining interdisciplinary insights; and (4) bridging discourses in organization theory. We end the piece with suggestions for future paradox research inspired by these conversations.

Over the past decades, scholars advanced foundational insights about paradox in organization theory. In this double volume, we seek to expand upon these insights through interdisciplinary theorizing. We do so for two reasons. First, we think that now is a moment to build on those foundations toward richer, more complex insights by learning from disciplines outside of organization theory. Second, as our world increasingly faces grand challenges, scholars turn to paradox theory. Yet as the challenges become more complex, authors turn to other disciplines to ensure the requisite complexity of our own theories. To advance these goals, we invited scholars with knowledge in paradox theory to explore how these ideas could be expanded by outside disciplines. This provides a both/and opportunity for paradox theory: both learning from outside disciplines beyond existing boundaries and enriching our insights in organization scholarship. The result is an impressive collection of papers about paradox theory that draws from four outside realms – the realm of belief, the realm of physical systems, the realm of social structures, and the realm of expression. In this introduction, we expand on why paradox theory is ripe for interdisciplinary theorizing, explore the benefits of doing so, and introduce the papers in this double volume.

Interdisciplinary research allows us to broaden our sights and expand our theories. Yet, such research surfaces a number of challenges. We highlight three issues – superficiality, lack of focus, and consilience - and discuss how they can be addressed in interdisciplinary research. In particular, we focus on the implications for interdisciplinary work with paradox scholarship. We explore how these issues can be navigated as scholars bring together different epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies within interdisciplinary research, and illustrate our key points by drawing on extant work in paradox theory and on examples from this double volume. Our paper contributes to paradox scholarship, and to organizational theory more broadly, by offering practices about how to implement interdisciplinary research while also advancing our understanding about available research methods.

In the present chapter, we present the case study of the only woman film director who has ever won an Academy Award for Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow. We analyzed 43 written interviews of Kathryn Bigelow that have appeared in the popular press in the period 1988–2013 and outlined eight main themes emerging regarding her exercise of leadership in the cinematic context. We utilize three theoretical frameworks: (a) paradoxical leadership theory (Lewis, Andriopoulos, & Smith, 2014; Smith & Lewis, 2012); (b) ambidextrous leadership theory (Rosing, Frese, & Bausch, 2011), and (c) role congruity theory (Eagley & Karau, 2002) and show how Bigelow, as a woman artist/leader working in a complex organizational system that emphasizes radical innovation, exercised paradoxical and ambidextrous leadership and challenged existing conventions about genre, gender, and leadership. The case study implications for teaching and practice are discussed.

The way organizational actors use language to think about and communicate their organizational experiences is central to how organizational actors enact organizational paradox. However, most inquiries into the role of language in the organizational paradox literature has focused on specific components of language (e.g., discourse), without attention to the complex, multi-level linguistic system that is interconnected to organizational processes. In this chapter, we expand our knowledge of the role of language by integrating paradox research with research from the linguistics discipline. We identify a series of linguistic tensions (i.e., generalizability-specificity, universalism-particularism, and explicitness-implicitness) that are nested within organizational paradoxes. In the process, we reveal how the organizing paradox of control and autonomy is interconnected to other paradoxes (i.e., performing, learning, and belonging) through the instantiation of linguistic paradoxes. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on paradox and language.

This chapter investigates the mutual relationship between logic and paradox, showing that paradox is indispensable to test logic, as well as logic is necessary to extend our understanding of paradox. Firstly, I consider the lesson that organizational theory can draw from formal logic’s investigation of semantic and set-theoretic paradoxes. Subsequently, I survey the plural interpretations of the concept of “logic” in organizational theory (as logic of theory, logic of practice, and institutional logics). I argue that this plurality of meanings is not a source of confusion but offers an opportunity to illustrate different manifestations of, and ways to cope with, organizational paradoxes.

Scholars increasingly depict hybridity as pervasive across organizations. The authors offer insight about how paradox theory informs and expands this approach to hybridity. To do so, the authors do a deeper dive into paradox theory, comparing and contrasting a dynamic equilibrium approach with a permanent dialectics approach. Integrating these two approaches offers paradox theory insights that can enrich and expand hybridity scholarship. The authors offer suggestions for how paradox theory can help develop a future research agenda for organizational hybridity.

This chapter introduces two core notions from Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory to paradox studies. Specifically, it offers the notions of decision paradox and deparadoxization as potential generative theoretical devices for paradox scholars. Drawing on these devices, the paper shifts focus to the everyday and mundane nature of decision paradox and the important role of deparadoxization (i.e., generating latency) in working through paradox. This contribution comes at a critical juncture for paradox scholarship, which has begun to converge around core theories, by opening up additional and possibly alternative theoretical pathways for understanding paradox. These ideas respond to recent calls in the literature to widen our theoretical repertoire and align scholarship more closely with the rich, pluralistic traditions of paradox studies.

That life is inundated with constant push–pull between contradictory demands is indisputable. Different traditions and worldviews inform individuals’ approaches to dealing with the ensuing paradoxes. However, the literature has focused on Western and Eastern philosophies and traditions, while disregarding others such as the Afrocentric. In this chapter, the authors explore Ubuntu, an Afrocentric tradition, as an alternative philosophical underpinning that can inform the nature of paradoxes. Doing so enriches the understanding, problematizing and managing of paradoxes. Central to Ubuntu is otherness: the emphasis on the need of the other that implies focusing on the other; in doing so, the polarities of diverse needs are accommodated, striving for an ultimate goal of harmony. Moreover, the authors elaborate on the hybrid space where collapsing the East–West and the West and non-west dualism allow engagement with a multiplicity of worldviews. In so doing, the authors expand paradox theorizing beyond the orthodoxy of East and West antinomies and challenge the basic assumption in paradox management by asking the question: what if we start from others’ demands?

Inhibitory control (IC) is a central executive function that shows significant development throughout the preschool years. IC is known as a factor that underlies the ability to self-regulate in daily situations. This ability is challenged when a child faces negative emotions; a challenge that is seen in children’s IC performance and brain activity. This chapter elaborates on the effects that negative emotional experiences have on children’s IC functioning. Moreover, previous studies regarding the way emotional experiences are reflected in brain activity are included. Additionally, this chapter will offer a comprehensive review of the factors affecting individual differences in IC, including the role of children’s temperamental effortful control and negative affectivity. Further, the role of parenting behaviors will be discussed, focusing on the way in which maternal self-regulation influences child inhibitory control, including related educational implications.