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The purpose of this paper is to examine how paradox emerges during a planned change initiative to improve and dramatically transform inter‐agency information sharing. Based on interviews with key decision makers, the authors interrogate the relationships among institutional contradictions, emergent dualities, the communicative management of related organizational stakeholder paradoxes, and the consequences of enacted solutions.

Interviews with government leaders serve as the data source. These decision makers are from justice agencies participating in planning an information‐sharing program to better protect citizens and their agencies' workforce.

The data suggests that Seo and Creed's institutional contradiction “isomorphism conflicting with divergent interests” gave rise to three interdependent dualities: stakeholder self‐interest/collective good, stakeholder inclusion/exclusion, and emergent stakeholder consensus/leader driven decision making. These dualities were implicated in the enactment of paradox and its management. No matter what strategy the managers used, the consequences themselves were paradoxical, rooted in the same dualities that were originally present.

The authors sought to trace the outcomes of how leaders managed the poles of dualities, and found evidence of unintended consequences that were intriguing in their own right and were linked to stakeholder considerations. The paper underscores the importance of communication in the representation of paradoxes and how they were managed, and the unintended consequences of the solutions.

Leaders' articulations of paradox can be tapped for improving change efforts.

Whereas, institutional contradictions have been examined in reference to emerging paradox, and while paradoxical solutions have been studied widely, little research has investigated how institutional contradictions become simultaneously embedded in the process and the outcomes of organizational change.

The aim of this paper is to provide a solid theoretical base to the study of paradox in organized activity. It draws upon activity theory to show the managerial and analytical potential of the activity systems model (ASM) as a systematic tool to analyze paradox in organizational practice.

The methodology employed in the study can be described as a longitudinal multiple case study approach. The focal organization was followed over a period of three years. About 25 interviews and 50 participatory observations were made. Text documents were analysed using an analytical tool developed from theory – the “Analysis Readiness Review (ARR)” – to structure and categorize data.

This study shows that the locus of paradox can be empirically identified within and between the constituent elements of an ASM, and that the consequence of such paradox is the emergence of a new genetically more evolved ASM. Hence, paradox in organized activity will eventually usher in change, such as the rearrangement of the elements of organized activity, and the replacement of one or many of those elements.

This research is limited in that it models only two principal types of contradictions in activity systems, both of which are inner contradictions intrinsic to the activity system in question. The case study is merely indicative and more empirical research is needed to further extend our knowledge of paradox in various types of organized activity.

Managers can utilize the ARR‐tool as a systematic checklist to identify the elements of the organizational practice and to locate paradoxes. In doing so, they can actively take part in shaping the dialectical processes of change that the paradoxes create, by paying attention to the contradictions present in the activity system. This is the challenge to management that paradoxical organizational practice poses, and this paper provides one tool to help managers and researchers to better face this challenge.

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 purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamics that underlie contradictions and paradoxes in organizational change over time. Little research has explored the role of contradictions and paradoxes in the continuous cycle of organizing, which are simultaneously embedded in the process and outcomes of organizational change. An encompassing framework, based on the thinking of Michel Foucault, more fully captures both the paradoxical roots and the effects of organizational change.

An in‐depth qualitative case study of an IT‐based organizational change in a company offers a clear longitudinal analysis, based on 31 semi‐structured interviews and direct field observation.

The Foucauldian framework deepens understanding of organizational change and its underlying dynamics by highlighting contradictions and paradoxes as both the medium and the outcome of the organizing process over time. The organizing process evolves through power‐knowledge relations, which are forces that provide the energy to make change possible.

The findings indicate the need for further research to develop insight into Foucauldian concepts, such as by replicating the proposed methodology in other companies or with other types of organizational change.

This paper is of managerial interest for various corporate players (management, human resources, information management) who must understand what underlies employees' acceptance of organizational change.

The proposed conceptual model can help interpret the role of contradictions and paradoxes in the organizing process. The strength of this “political model of organizational change” is that it can be combined with other perspectives, such as change management, to explore how organizations drive change and how managers can integrate contradictions and paradoxes in change management to help the organization further evolve.

The traditional dualism view regards stability and change as opposites and separate, two essential but largely incompatible and mutually exclusive elements in an organization, and it advocates contingency theories to handle the paradox situation; more recent research has adopted the paradoxical lens to highlight both the contradiction and the interdependence between the two elements. This paper aims to address how an organization pursues stability and change simultaneously, i.e., how stability and change contradictorily enable each other to promote the development of an organization.

By adopting a case study on the strategic and structural change of Signcomplex in China, this paper attempts to explore the paradoxical relationship between stability and change, especially their interdependence. Multiple approaches were used during data collection to meet the criteria for trustworthiness, and the data analysis went through a five-step process. Through this analysis, the main mechanisms of stability and change were identified. An analysis was also conducted on how these stable and variable mechanisms enable each other, and finally, a framework was set up to show this paradoxical relationship.

The results confirm the paradox of stability and change: stability enables change by supplying security and consistency, offering reserved knowledge and skills and enabling commitment and the provision of resources for a better realization of the change. Change enables a firm to set up a new state of stability through variable mechanisms such as trial-and-error and exploration activities. The results also indicate that the nature of organizational change is to help an organization reach a new stable stage with higher efficiency and that organizational development relies on the paradoxical effects of both stability and change.

This research is constrained by several limitations. The findings need to be further confirmed through the investigation of more organizations; other stable mechanisms, such as habits, tight coupling, commitments, control and low variance, and variable mechanisms, such as search, mindfulness, redundancy and openness, should be considered. As an organization may experience many cross-level or cross-department changes which struggle with each other for resources and with stable mechanisms, to explore the paradox, future research may need to conduct a more in-depth examination of the system of change.

The findings offer some valuable insights for further research and hold important implications for management practices, especially management practices in a Chinese context. The findings extend the existing paradox theory by further revealing how stability and change enable each other and offer a paradoxical perspective to look into the nature of organizational change and organizational development. The results remind managers to rethink the relationship between stability and change, to factor these coexisting concepts into their decision-making and to accept, understand and use this paradoxical relationship to realize synergistic effects for the firm.

Organizational scholars are intrigued about stakeholders who propose multiple and conflicting ideas about what is good for their organization. Such contradictions are called paradoxical tensions. Although researchers have singled these out for analysis, focusing only on individual tensions prevents scrutiny of multiple paradoxical tensions that simultaneously emerge and how effectively organizations can manage them. In complex environments – especially during an organizational restructuring – multiple and interrelated tensions occur. Therefore, the objective in this paper is to investigate how organizations create multiple paradoxical tensions and how the combined effect of such tensions can constrain organizations during restructuring. The authors thus aim to help managers think reflectively and to plan interventions to deal with issues arising from restructuring through the lens of paradox theory.

The authors adopted purposive sampling for an archival research-based case study of a major restructuring of a leading IT firm in India in the decade 2009–2019. This study focused on the types of paradoxes created and the response of the organization to these during the restructure. The authors identified key events using public documents and news reports from that decade. They drew on two sources of data: mainstream media coverage and third-party documents about the company. The latter included monographs and academic publications written by critics, business historians and design and management scholars.

The findings address the gaps in the literature about how reorganizing during a restructure shapes the contradictions that lead to tensions and coexisting conflicting dualities, creating paradoxes. This study provides the reader with deeper insights into belonging, organizing, learning and performing tensions – core to paradox theory – along with their short- and long-term implications for organizational restructuring. The study demonstrates organizational responses to paradox and its practical implications for managers. The paradoxical nature of cultural–structural tensions in Indian organizations continues to be researched but, by focusing on paradox theory, the authors have opened doors for future research.

Although there is no dispute that effective management of tensions can facilitate organizational performance, contradictory demands that lead to tensions have only intensified as organizational environments become more global, dynamic and competitive. Paradox theory is thus valuable for understanding tensions between equally valid principles, inferences and insights. Although this paper is based on a case study, the framework proposed here can form the basis for theoretical generalizability within certain limitations. Because organizations face similar paradoxical situations under competing demands during restructuring and because paradoxes are becoming increasingly prevalent in organizations, the authors expect their propositions to apply in other cases of restructuring. However, the authors would like to caution that the model developed here should be tested and refined in other contexts to more fully establish its validity and generalizability.

This paper aims to explore whether philosophical insights from Plato's dialogue “Parmenides” on the complex and often paradoxical nature of change can illuminate the nature of information retrieval (IR). IR is modelled as a dialectic process involving mutually dependent yet conflicting forces between the subjective and the objective. These forces operate to produce change in the subjective experience of users (becoming informed) through facilitating a relationship with objective documents. Accurately modelling, predicting and enabling this process remains a persistent problem for IR and this paper seeks to examine the extent to which this is because of the nature of change.

The paper is a conceptual analysis and literature review.

The problem of change (what it is, how it happens and how we can know it has happened) is essential to our understanding of information as information normally implies some kind of change in knowledge state. Any process of change, however, on examination of its qualities, appears to necessitate the combination of irreconcilable and conflicting forces. The apparent contradictions within the existence of change as discussed in “Parmenides” also exist in IR on both a theoretical and a technical level.

Change is a central concept for information in general and IR in particular. A deeper understanding of the paradoxical nature of change can provide new insights into IR theory and practice.

The paper presents a new historical philosophical perspective on the nature of change and applies it to current IR problems.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt a paradox lens for dovetailing the human resource management sub-domains of talent management (TM) and diversity management (DM), in the attempt to create closer alignment between the two.

The authors review paradox theory, TM and DM literatures and formulate a paradox that becomes apparent when considering TM and DM simultaneously.

The authors coin this tension as the “exclusion-inclusion paradox,” highlighting that TM and DM reflect contradictory, yet interrelated principles: organizations promote exclusion through a TM architecture that focuses on the identification and development of a few selected employees, while simultaneously, organizations promote inclusion, in the attempt to minimize existing inequalities for traditionally marginalized groups.

Once uncovered, the exclusion-inclusion paradox enables organizational actors to make choices on whether to respond actively or defensively to the paradox. The authors argue for active responses in order to work through the paradox.

This is the first paper adopting a paradox lens in order to interweave the DM literature with TM literature in the attempt to explain how DM and TM constitute contradicting yet interrelated principles.

The purpose of this study is to further paradox research at the individual level through applying a framework of three phases of individual response to paradox – recognition, understanding and behaviour.

Critical and integrative review of previous studies of individual responses to paradox.

The role of individual understanding is limited in extant research on individual responses to paradox. Individual understanding tends to be equated with behaviour, and thus knowledge of understanding is not differentiated enough, neither is the link between understanding and behaviour sufficiently developed.

The review does not consider the relationship to interactional, organisational and environmental contexts. The recommendation for future research is to explore individual responses to paradox more entirely, to provide an adequate ground for extending paradox theory across individual and broader levels of analysis.

The review contributes to paradox theory by separating individual understanding and then providing a framework in which recognition, understanding and behaviour can be reintegrated in new ways. In addition to more accurate discernment of individual understanding and of combinations of responses across phases, the three-phase framework facilitates investigation of more intricate influences across phases and paths of evolution of such responses over time.

In this commentary, the authors introduce certain paradoxes of religious experience, ways the sacred is both attractive and repulsive, how there are urges to merge with the divine and to meaningfully change the world, how sacred power is both ineffable and accessible, how the divine can best be understood as a coincidence of opposites, how there is both good and evil in the world, and how religions sometimes proclaim peace yet instigate wars. The authors link these paradoxes with the contributions of the chapters in this volume on religion and philosophy. On the basis of both our and the chapters’ contributions the authors demonstrate several domains where religious paradox adds important insights to organizational approaches to paradox.