Search results

The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of paradoxes, underlying tensions and potential management strategies when integrating digital technologies into existing lean-based production systems (LPSs), with the aim of achieving synergies and fostering the development of production systems.

This study adopts a collaborative management research (CMR) approach to identify patterns of organisational tensions and paradoxes and explore management strategies to overcome them. The data were collected through interviews and focus group interviews with experts on lean and/or digital technologies from the companies, from documents and from workshops with the in-case researchers.

The findings of this paper provide insights into the salient organisational paradoxes embraced in the integration of digital technologies in LPS by identifying different aspects of the performing, organising, learning and belonging paradoxes. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate the intricacies and relatedness between different paradoxes and their resolutions, and more specifically, how a resolution strategy adopted to manage one paradox might unintentionally generate new tensions. This, in turn, calls for either re-contextualising actions to counteract the drift or the adoption of new resolution strategies.

This paper adds perspective to operations management (OM) research through the use of paradox theory, and we (1) provide a fine-grained perspective on why integration sometimes “fails” and label the forces of internal drift as mechanisms of imbalances and (2) provide detailed insights into how different management and resolution strategies are adopted, especially by identifying re-contextualising actions as a key to rebalancing organisational paradoxes in favour of the integration of digital technologies in LPSs.

To explore whether deliberate organisational change of a public sector organisation (a local municipality) would create an avenue for organisational learning.

A case study was set up to study the means by which the organisational change towards a digital administration was to come about. The organisational change was interpreted through the optics of theories of organisational learning. A pragmatic version of these theories is presented and applied in the study in which learning is understood as being triggered by the meeting with uncertainty and the relation between the individual and the organisation (subject‐world) as transactional (a continuous mutual formation).

Viewed through the lenses of a pragmatic understanding of organisational learning it is possible to extend this understanding to an understanding of organisations as arenas made up by social worlds created and held together by commitments to organisational activities. Further, elaborating the idea of learning as being triggered by the meeting with uncertainty into the organisational arena, it is possible to characterise organisational tensions made up by different commitments to the organisational change and development as tensions between social worlds. It is argued that these tensions may act as closures or openings towards organisational learning understood as the continuous transformation of the organisation.

This paper offers an understanding of organisational learning that ties the subject‐world, the individual‐organisation, together in a way that is coherent with the learning theory. Further, it offers possibilities for working with the enhancement of organisational learning by way of paving a way for joint critical thinking or inquiry.

The purpose of the current study is to identify the nature, scope and locus of and to systematize, the conceptual contradictions existing in dynamic capabilities research.

This paper employs a content analysis literature review of 86 papers on dynamic capabilities published between 1997 and 2019, using two databases – EBSCO and Web of Science/Knowledge databases. To structure the review, Smith and Lewis's (2011) categorization of organizational tensions is adopted.

First, the findings of this study suggest that DCs not only are shaped by a tension between efficiency and flexibility but also are built upon a large number of contradictory aspects, represented by organizing, performing, belonging and learning paradoxes. Second, the analysis identifies defensive and active responses to these tensions, with the former prevailing in the dynamic capabilities view literature. Both kinds of responses may facilitate or hinder organizational change. Third, it was found that while the literature has focused predominantly on organizing and learning paradoxes, the linkage between these categories remains under-researched.

This study makes three contributions. First, it identifies the scope (i.e. number), locus (analytical level) and nature (paradox categories and sub-categories) of DC-related paradoxes and responses to paradoxical tensions. Second, it shows that the nature and locus of conceptual contradictions are more complex than conceptualized in prior studies, going beyond the contingency and ambidexterity argument of how to deal with DC-related paradoxes. Third, it seeks to extend Di Stefano et al.'s (2014) proposition of integrating paradoxical views on different DC-related aspects. The idea of “audio console” introduced in this study highlights the interrelation of paradoxes between the categories and across analytical levels.

The aim of the study is to deepen the knowledge about municipalities' risk communication for preparedness. This objective was pursued by analyzing how risk communication functions were organized in municipalities and by scrutinizing tensions in risk communication management.

The study relies on 19 qualitative, semi-structured interviews with communication practitioners in Swedish municipalities. The sample was purposive and included Swedish municipalities varying in number of inhabitants, geographical location, degree of urbanization, size and risk profile.

Risk communication is seen as a sub-field of crisis communication in municipalities' communication management. The task of initiating risk communication activities and campaigns is frequently assigned to the municipalities' safety units or emergency coordinators and is normally not part of communication practitioners' duties. Municipal communication practitioners often face challenges in trying to demonstrate the significance of the practitioners' role in risk communication and other risk-related activities within the municipality. The practitioners' work is characterized by four categories of tensions that are identified as follows: constitutional/legal, organizational, cultural and technological.

The identified tensions in risk communication are important for reflexive practitioners to consider, and the paper suggests three steps that municipal communication managers can take to handle them.

The study contributes with novel knowledge about municipal communication management in a context of risk communication. The study challenges the existing and dominant risk communication research and offers a more contextual and reflexive understanding of actual risk communication processes in municipalities.

The purpose of this paper is to apply Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz to illustrate the individual identity issues that can arise as a result of institutional complexity in organizations. Using Baum’s text to tell the story of four faculty members seeking the city of Oz, which in our story is a university athletic department, reveals how individuals and organizational units deal with the tensions brought about by institutional complexity. In addition to providing an entertaining, perhaps infuriating account of the typical public university, this essay reveals the importance of understanding individual struggles to deal with organizational pluralism.

The authors use the well-established example of the university using Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz in allegorical form to illustrate the tensions that emerge from organizational units that deal with contradicting external environments as well as the sensemaking and search processes that can emerge for individuals dealing with the identity issues that can result from such tensions.

Internal tensions can emerge within organizations when there are contradictions among the various pressures such organizations generate. These tensions have implications on individual identity.

Individuals (in this case individuals from academic units) risk having their occupational identities compromised by divergent organizational units as these units attempt to legitimate their existence within the organization. The authors illustrate how individuals deal with such risks by engaging in search processes that seek to construct their identities and develop meaning for their actions.

As hybrid organizations become increasingly common, the authors observe that some hybrid forms are becoming institutionalized and legitimated. The authors explore the implications of the institutionalization of hybridity, addressing both the internal tensions that plague many hybrids and the external tensions stemming from evaluator assessments and stakeholder uncertainty. The authors propose that institutionalization can dampen internal tensions associated with hybridity and also facilitate legitimation and acceptance by external audiences. The authors present identity as a useful theoretical lens through which to examine these questions, as identities are born from, but also have the potential to modify, existing institutional arrangements. The authors present directions for future research at the juncture of identity, hybridity, and institutionalization, suggesting potential avenues of inquiry in this productive stream of research.

The purpose of this paper is to unpack tensions faced by procurement professionals as part of their triple bottom line (TBL) sustainability activities. The authors take an integrative perspective based on the procurement sustainability and organizational tensions literature, as well as stakeholder and institutional theory.

The authors use a multiple case study approach. Data are collected through multiple interviews and archival data from eight case companies in Australia.

The authors identify supply chain and company procurement sustainability tensions (PSTs) and explain their multi-level nature. The analysis also dissects the multi-stakeholder and multi-institutional environments where PSTs operate. The authors discuss such environments in terms of various temporal and spatial legitimacy contexts (LCs) that, through their assessment of institutional distance, can characterize the manifestation of PSTs.

The findings are instrumental for managers to make informed decisions when dealing with PSTs, and they pave the way for paradoxical leadership given the increasing importance of simultaneous development and balancing of TBL dimensions, as evidenced in this study.

This is one of the first studies to empirically investigate PSTs by drawing on an integrative approach to identify PSTs, and to discern various LCs that underpin stakeholder judgments of procurement’s TBL sustainability activities.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the contextual conditions under which mobile forms of work are chosen by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the most relevant tensions that these firms should be able to face in order to be successful in the adoption of these forms of work.

A survey analysis on 304 SMEs and an analysis of a collection of case studies were conducted to answer to the following research questions: what is the role of contextual conditions in shaping the way firms develop and use their mobile forms of work? Which tensions do SMEs need to manage when adopt a particular mobile form of work?

In this paper, the authors found that SMEs choose different mobile forms of work according to the conditions under which they operate. For example, SMEs that adopt mobile forms of work for operational reasons are more capable of using IT to improve their external orientation. Moreover, the analysis of the configurations of mobile forms of work led to classify in a systematic way the managerial and organizational tensions, and to identify which tensions need to be managed in each mobile work configuration. For example, firms that adopt mobile work given individual employee requests need to manage human resource management tensions.

Future research should analyse in depth the jobs that are frequently engaged in mobility and the operational and strategic reasons of their mobility. Moreover, future research should analyse more in-depth companies’ capability of managing tensions discussed in this paper.

Managers should understand that mobile work is an essential element in the organizational strategy of SMEs, since it is a way to manage more effectively externally oriented business processes. Also policy makers should provide financial support for programmes aimed at promoting the importance of mobile forms of work, since they allow achieving different objectives and saving. Further, demand-oriented policies and experiences about mobile work adoption should be shared.

The authors found scant empirical evidence on understanding the contextual conditions under which SMEs choose different mobile forms of work, and the most relevant tensions that SMEs should deal with when they decide for the adoption of a particular mobile work configuration. The value of this paper consists in filling this research gap.

A surface view of monotheistic or “Western” religions might lead some to infer a singularity to truth that is inconsistent with paradoxical thinking. The author explores a key Biblical narrative common to both Judaism and Christianity – the story of origins that unfolds in the Garden of Eden. The author posits that the foundations of those belief systems, and particularly those of Christian theology, are paradoxical as evidenced in their historic texts (i.e., the Old and New Testaments of the Bible). A foundational paradox of an “ought versus is” (ideal vs. actual) tension that underlies or intertwines in knot-like fashion with other paradoxes is identified in ways that account for a current world view marked by temporality (in tension with eternality) and becoming (in tension with being). These tensions are made salient as humans continually work toward ideals that seem always just out of reach. Paradox conceptualization is also expanded to propose the notion of mutual embeddedness rather than mutual exclusivity of opposites. Implications for organizational paradoxes are explicated, along with directions for future research based on novel insights provided by the juxtaposition of religion and paradox.

This paper aims to discuss the role of communication in relieving tensions that can arise from organizational practices enacted during structural change. Practices, according to Whittington (2006, p. 619), constitute shared routines of behaviour, including traditions, norms and procedures for thinking and acting.

Employees’ reflections regarding what, how and why certain circumstances occurred during the structural reform of an Estonian State Institution with approximately 300 employees, comprised the study data. Reflections were collected during 27 interviews conducted after recent change to the structure of this organization. After aggregating different actions, associations and emotions into practices, these practices were assigned to elements offered by Schatzki (2005), and tensions between the elements sought and analysed.

Analysis of the three practices extracted as forming part of the structural reform – management decision-making, recruitment and physical relocation – showed that in organizational settings, the constitutional role of communication within practices needs conscious attention at different levels of the practice. Tensions that arose between practice elements, e.g. rules or reasons for doing something not complying with ways of doing it, revealed the need for metacommunication regarding those elements.

Communication during organizational changes needs to be more than crafted messages via well-organized channels from the communications department; it needs to penetrate to all different levels before, during and after a change. All that to create as many opportunities for employees at all levels to collectively make sense of what is happening and for the management to make necessary changes based on that. It should be created consciously by for example inviting employees together in discussion circles during the planning phase of the change and outlining the key processes of the change in question with them involved.

The value of this study is in investigating what goes on in an organization by distancing oneself from the immediate behaviour of an individual to focus on patterns of action, which gives another understanding as to why even when people wish for the best, things often still do not turn out as hoped. This approach refers to the theory that there are tensions or mistakes coded into practices, thus allowing one to look at inter-personal communication as part of other actions, not as a separate line of actions.