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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.

The field of organization development is about change and development of organizational systems. One of the major barriers to system change is organizational silence, the fear of lower level to speak truth to power, and senior leaders' reluctance to seek the truth. Consequently, senior leaders whose role is to orchestrate strategic change that will develop the organization's capabilities do not know the whole truth about their system's capabilities to achieve its purpose and strategy and live to its values. Thirty years of enabling leaders to transform their organization through safe honest, collective, and internally public conversations using a structured process called the Strategic Fitness Process (SFP) has led to insights about why such conversations are powerfully transformative. After a brief description of the SFP, this chapter describes insights and supporting grounded data about why honest conversations were transformative when leaders fully embrace the practice and spirit of SFP. These insights were gained from facilitating and observing hundreds of honest conversations in progress. The findings have implications for how leaders aided by consultants can accelerate strategic change that will improve effectiveness and performance while simultaneously transforming trust and commitment.

In this paper, we offer a model of how leaders and managers can create energy for change by influencing patterns of conversation across the organization. We develop the model by linking social constructionist thought with theory from the field of positive psychology. We propose that effective leaders work with others to co-author persuasive narratives of change that generate energy by providing people (including themselves) with a sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Energy is expressed in the form of support, time, money, and resources, which contribute to the success of the work. Continuous attention to crafting persuasive narratives in a collaborative way creates upward spirals of energy, and increases the probability of successful change over time. We illustrate these ideas with a case study of a successful IT change initiative in a Fortune 100 insurance company, and conclude by discussing implications for research and practice.

Extending the argument made in Bushe and Marshak (2009) of the emergence of a new species of Organization Development (OD) that we label Dialogic, to differentiate it from the foundational Diagnostic form, we argue that how any OD method is used in practice will be depend on the mindset of the practitioner. Six variants of Dialogic OD practice are reviewed and compared to aid in identification of a Weberian ideal-type Dialogic Mindset, consisting of eight premises that distinguish it from the foundational Diagnostic Mindset. Three core change processes that underlie all successful Dialogic OD processes are proposed, and suggestions for future research offered.

Taking the dialogic organizational development perspective, this study aims to investigate the framing processes when engaging in dialogue for strategy implementation and how these enable the evolution of implementation opportunities.

Through a qualitative exploratory study conducted in a large multinational, the authors analyse the dialogue and interactions among 25 dyads when identifying opportunities to contribute to strategy implementation. The data analysis relies on a process-coding approach and linkography, a valuable protocol analysis for identifying recursive interaction schemas in conversations.

The authors identify four main framing processes – shaping, unveiling, scattering and shifting – and provide a framework of how these processes affect individuals’ mental models through increasing the tangibility of opportunities or elevating them to new value hierarchies.

From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to the strategy implementation and organizational development literature, providing a micro-perspective of how dialogue allows early knowledge structures to emerge and shape the development of opportunities for strategy implementation.

From a managerial perspective, the authors offer insights to trigger action and change in individuals to contribute to strategy when moving from formulation to implementation.

Rather than focusing on the structural control view of strategy implementation and the role of the top management team, this study considers strategy implementation as a practice and what it takes for organizational actors who do not take part in strategy formulation to enact and shape opportunities for strategy implementation through constructive dialogue.

Through a conversation with a practitioner, aims to understand the definitions given to the learning organization and how they relate to a model of organizational learning.

Provides a brief overview of a conversation concerning organizational learning vs the learning organization.

Organizational learning and the learning organization can and should co‐exist. To be effective as a learning organization there is a need for a deep learning cycle and recognition that it will take time.

Offers advice on how to be an effective learning organization.

The purpose of this paper is to provide guidelines for improving performance dialogue with a specific process and framework, leveraging existing literature.

Building upon Mengis and Eppler’s (2008) framework for conversation management, this study follows an action research approach, involving a process of co-creation, split into several distinct stages including two series of 20 semi-structured interviews with top executives of a major pharmaceutical company. These executives were directly involved in using the performance measurement system (PMS) in order to provide guidelines for improving performance dialogue. The data were analysed using content analysis, and the authors helped to develop a solution.

The analysis reveals a variety of recurrent communicative challenges and practices, which all appear to be characteristic for the performance dialogue process. The proposed framework consists of four separate phases, namely: data collection and identification of the main under and over-performance gaps, root cause analysis and action plans formulation, dialogue and solution implementation and dissemination of best practices.

This research contributes to the literature by introducing work on organisational communication into the field of PMS, by proposing a communication model for performance dialogue implementation. Furthermore, it addresses companies’ issues on how to successfully use their PMS and proposes a framework with specific prerequisites to be put into practice. Finally, this study offers a different explanation in the form of the lack of performance dialogue for the failure of PMS, compared to the current explanations found in the literature.

In times of organizational thirst for employee engagement and meaning through designing corporate stories, the aim of this article is to explore and identify key sources (engines) of engagement during LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) corporate learning pre-pandemic events of various types and size in Poland.

This is a conceptual paper. The research was conducted using participant observation from the perspective of a certified facilitator of the method. This position ensures a prime access to the organizational events. Eight training sessions (four LSP and four non-LSP workshops) have been analysed using thematic analysis. The structure of thematic codes has been conceptualized and reflected as the EPIC framework.

The findings include (1) the importance of the experience of emerging realities as a key generator of engagement, (2) the significance of social collaboration and peer-to-peer interactions (experience of collective intelligence), (3) the observable rise in engagement and willingness to contribute when real business situations, especially labelled as “strategic issues” are discussed and (4) the role of image-capturing (“snapshot experience”) in creation of an engaging learning experience.

The limitations refer to the potential conflict of interests as the researcher is also the facilitator of the workshop. To ensure the neutral point of view of the researcher, the sessions have been recorded to enable transparency of the observation and non-biased logic of key findings. The “learning experience” research is also culture- and context-sensitive, thus it may be problematic to replicate the research procedure in different countries, however, the EPIC model can be treated as a universal framework to explore and identify the engines of engagement.

The concept of this paper is designed from the practical point of view. The findings are adaptable to the corporate practices aimed at empowering employees and are compatible with management models such as agile, human enablement and human-centred design in organizations.

Serious play methods of learning and experiencing are said to be of the highest importance when finding new ways of organizational learning in the pandemic situation and work from home as a standard learning environment.

The contribution of this paper is visible in the conceptualization of the moments that shape an engaging experience. This is also the first academic paper presenting the perspective of a certified facilitator of LSP from Central and Eastern Europe region.

As Piderit (2000) points out, much of the work on resistance to change borrows from the field of mechanics, conceptualizing resistance as a force that slows or stops motion and increases the energy and work required to alter the rate and magnitude (distance) of movement. These ideas are evident in Lewin's (1947) work on resistance in which he conceptualizes a quasi-stationary equilibrium as a dynamic balance between a field of forces driving for movement in one direction and a field of forces driving for movement in the opposite direction; movement in the equilibrium occurs only through increases and decreases in these forces.

This paper proposes a perspective of change agency that builds on the regenerative power of language achieved through ongoing talk and conversations associated with managing change. It seeks to elaborate on the role of speech in helping one to see change as a continuous stream of socially constructed utterances.

Configurations have played a central role in determining the extent of fit or misfit between entities – a prelude for steering change and modes of intervention. Much of the reliance on the notion of fit or misfit between entities has been largely driven by conceptions of organizations as consisting of objective entities. But change is not separate from its own construction; conduct of change is deeply rooted in meanings people attach to events. The paper develops a constructionist perspective of change agency; one that builds on the role of language in constructing change.

The social construction of meaning remains crucial for building connections with organizational identity. The main finding is that there is a very rich meeting point where both language and social construction converge to find each other. For change to take root, change agents would need to emphasize the social co‐construction of meaning and to focus on the role utterance plays in the formation of organizational identity.

The paper develops a constructionist perspective of change agency (regenerative and transforming qualities); one that builds on the role of language in constructing change.