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Professor Ruth Simpson has been a key contributor to the field of gender and organization studies (GOS) over the past 25 years. She has influenced debates on women in management, the gender of management education, masculinity and management and the “doing” of gender in organizational life. In this paper i review our joint work – informed by a poststructuralist feminist perspective – which considers the complex struggles around normativity in relation to management and entrepreneurship.

This review is based on a consideration of four pieces of work completed between 2005 and 2012, including (Simpson and Lewis, 2005, 2007) and (Lewis and Simpson, 2010, 2012).

Drawing on the concepts of voice and visibility, the research examines how the ability to exemplify the norm in relation to management and entrepreneurship must be constantly secured and how processes of inclusion and exclusion in relation to the norm are characterised by relentless agitation and turmoil.

We (Ruth and Patricia) developed the conceptual framework of the (In)visibility vortex as a means of connecting the individual to organizational processes, discourses and cultural norms

The purpose of this paper is to use Stewart’s model of role as a lense from which to explore chairperson and CEO role dynamics in addressing strategic paradox and tension.

The paper draws on 29 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with chairpersons and CEOs of UK-listed companies. Interview data are subjected to role analysis using Stewart’s (1982) Demands-Constraints-Choice (DCC) model of role.

Findings indicate that relationship levels of trust, communication and chairperson time enable strategic tensions to be raised and confronted in the relationship reducing defensiveness. Two distinct approaches to handle strategic tensions are found. The CEO-led approach predominates and rests on less flexible role boundaries, requiring the chairperson to proactively identify strategic tensions and perform an advisory/mentoring role. The shared leadership approach, less prevalent, rests on highly flexible role boundaries where the skills and experience of each incumbent become more relevant, enabling the separation of efforts and integration of strategic tensions in the relationship in a “dynamic complementarity of function”.

The paper only applies to the UK context and is limited to contexts where CEO and chairperson roles are separate. The paper draws on individual perceptions of chairperson and CEOs (i.e. not pairs).

The paper provides insights to practicing CEOs and chairperson on two distinct ways of working through strategic paradox and tensions.

The paper adds to the scarce literature at chairperson and CEO roles and strategic paradox and tension.

This paper aims to examine the discursive constitution of leadership identities by senior women leaders working in the City of London. This study draws on postfeminism as a critical concept to explore this constitution, as it has produced the cultural conditions for the reconfiguration of masculine and feminine gender norms in leadership.

In a qualitative study, 13 women leaders in positions of power in the City of London were interviewed. Discourse analysis techniques were used to unpack the postfeminist shaping of leadership identities

At the heart of the leadership identities that senior women leaders construct is a gendered hybridity that is a multifaceted calibration of masculine and feminine attributes and behaviours. Postfeminist discourses of individualism, choice and self-improvement are entangled with discourses of authenticity, relatability and connectivity as particular leadership assets. The gendered hybridity of leadership identities unfolds the possibility for a fundamental makeover of leadership by opening-up space for a transformative change that accommodates women leaders.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the very few studies that foreground the leadership identities that women leaders construct within the confines of postfeminist gender regimes. It shows how these women invoke authenticity, unfolding possibilities for the transformational change of and political challenge to traditional gendered leadership in their organizations.

Steady-state free convection heat transfer in a right-angle triangular porous enclosure filled by a nanofluid using the mathematical nanofluid model proposed by Buongiorno has been numerically analyzed. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The nanofluid model takes into account the Brownian diffusion and thermophoresis effects. The governing equations formulated in terms of the vorticity-stream function variables were solved by finite difference method.

It has been found that the average Nusselt number is an increasing function of the Rayleigh and Lewis numbers and a decreasing function of Brownian motion, buoyancy-ratio and thermophoresis parameters. At the same time the average Sherwood number is an increasing function of the Rayleigh and Lewis numbers, Brownian motion and thermophoresis parameters and a decreasing function of buoyancy-ratio parameter.

The present results are new and original for the heat transfer and fluid flow in a right-angle triangular porous enclosure filled by a nanofluid using the mathematical nanofluid model proposed by Buongiorno. The results would benefit scientists and engineers to become familiar with the flow behaviour of such nanofluids, and the way to predict the properties of this flow for possibility of using nanofluids in advanced nuclear systems, in industrial sectors including transportation, power generation, chemical sectors, ventilation, air-conditioning, etc.

This paper aims to look at how organisational partnerships balance knowledge exploration and exploitation in contexts that are rife with paradoxes. It draws on paradox theory to examine the partnership’s response to the explore-exploit relationship.

A multiple interpretive case study was used to examine international partnerships in three African countries. These partnerships were between international (Northern-based) non-governmental organisations and local African non-governmental organisations.

The research finds that within the partnership, knowledge exploration and exploitation exist as a duality rather than a dualism. This is supported by the acceptance and confrontation of paradoxes of performing and belonging. However, macro-level paradoxes of organising linked to power, culture and epistemologies inhibit further effective confrontation of the explore-exploit paradox.

The findings can help managers working in international development organisations to understand how learning is enabled and constrained in partnership-based programmes.

The study provides a novel contribution to knowledge management by applying the paradox perspective to the explore-exploit relationship. This paper extends previous work by drawing on the levels and repertoires present in the paradox perspective to understand how knowledge exploration and exploitation can be mutually reinforcing and can exist as a duality.

Accumulated evidence suggests that efforts at diversity management (DM) yield mixed results or even fail in terms of promoting workforce diversity. Previous scholarly attempts to explain the mixed results of DM initiatives provided only partial understanding. This study applies a paradox perspective to better understand the challenges of DM from the vantage point of diversity managers, who play a central role in the promotion and implementation of diversity initiatives.

In-depth interviews with diversity managers in large business organizations in Israel explored practitioners' conceptions of the challenges underlying the implementation of diversity initiatives. A grounded theory approach was utilized.

The findings reveal the emergence of paradox: diversity initiatives generate organizational tensions that undermine their success and hence amplify the need for further diversity interventions. Three distinct paradoxes are identified: necessary change vs desire for stability; bureaucratic control vs flexible procedures; and long-term business gains vs short-term losses. Diversity managers utilize two opposing strategies to contend with these paradoxes.

This study does not represent voices of diverse employees or of top executives. The data focused on mid-level practitioners' descriptions of DM challenges and their methods of contending with them.

The findings shed light on an effective strategy of contending with paradox. Recognizing paradox and navigating it properly may greatly advance the success of costly DM change interventions. Implications are suggested regarding the academic education and training of DM practitioners.

Based on the paradox framework, which offers a novel vantage point for understanding the challenges of implementing DM, the findings contribute to the scholarly understanding of the limited success of DM interventions.

Third-party logistics (3PL) companies have experienced an explosion of volume during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Special tiers have been introduced to provide differentiated levels of service to the customers. However, such changes in an organization reveal and intensify tensions known as paradoxes. The purpose of this research is to identify what paradoxes emerged or have become more salient specifically due to COVID-19 in 3PLs' ground operations and how they are dealt with by ground operation managers.

This is a qualitative study conducted in two phases. Phase one utilizes a questionnaire approach to identify the paradoxes within the 3PLs operating in the USA. Phase two, conducted six months after phase one, follows an in-depth one-on-one interview approach. NVivo 12 is employed to analyze the interview data.

The results show that new paradoxes did in fact emerge due to the COVID-19 and are mostly related to the performing paradox category. Findings from in-depth interviews show that the 3PL managers focus on keeping safety as priority to manage COVID-19 related paradoxes, along with modifying operational plans, improving communication, investing in training, optimizing hub network, introducing modified/new methods and adapting modified human resource policies.

This paper is among the first known to identify paradoxes within the 3PL operations during the COVID-19 and provides insights into how these paradoxes are dealt with at mid-management level. Findings of this study provide foundations for the development of a theoretical framework on handling paradoxes within 3PLs.

The purpose of this study is to map different kinds of tensions in product innovation and investigate how top managers use communication to shape subordinates' attention and thereby respond to these tensions.

This study adopted an embedded case study of four innovation centers within a Nordic multinational firm.

This study identifies three kinds of tensions that reside in product innovation, namely dilemma, paradox and trade-off. Further, this study reveals how joint attention (among top managers and subordinates) as a response to tensions can be achieved through different aggregates of top managers' communication efforts.

In opening the black box of tensions in product innovation and identifying multiple tensions, this study contributes to advancing the understanding of the attention-based view. Different from previous studies that simply consider communication as channels for information processing, the findings indicate that the contents and practices of communication can help top managers to shape subordinates' attention and thereby respond to tensions. This study also extends the research focus of attention from top managers to the whole organization, by revealing the importance of building a joint pattern of attention among top managers and subordinates.

Mental health promotion can learn from achievements in the field of health education and promotion. Health education and promotion has seen four major developments in the last decades: the need for planning, the need for evaluation, the behaviour‐environment issue, and the use of theory. A recently presented protocol for developing theory‐based and evidence‐based interventions, Intervention Mapping, is described here in more detail. Implementation is prominent in planning models and intervention protocols. The same expertise and professionalism that we put into the development of health promotion interventions for our target groups should be put into implementation interventions for programme users and decision‐makers.

This study explores the potential of paradox theory as a novel theoretical lens to investigate persistent and interdependent tensions in supply chains. It is based on a critical literature review focusing on paradoxes observed within complex supply chains in dynamic business environments, including the articles selected for this special issue, “Environmental Dynamism and Supply Chain Complexity: Managing the Paradoxes.”

This study introduces the key concepts and themes of the paradox theory literature and possible methodological approaches to studying paradoxes in supply chains. Through a literature review, this study also reflects on the current state of paradox research in the field of operations and supply chain management (OSCM) and proposes future research questions.

The application of paradox theory to OSCM research is in its early stages. This paper presents opportunities to explore persistent and interdependent tensions in supply chains using paradox theory.

The paper suggests several new research questions that should be translated into more precise propositions. The main implication for research is a call to focus attention on how and why a paradox perspective can help supply chain researchers view complex supply chain problems with fresh eyes.

The study provides the first critical review of paradoxical tensions in OSCM research. While the papers in this special issue contribute significantly to a better understanding of these issues, there is still significant potential for understanding how to respond to paradoxes in supply chains.