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Drawing on paradox theory and the category of the “performing-organizing” paradox, the study investigates the tensions firms experience in the context of organizing the processes involved in managing their indirect GHG emissions.

The authors develop hypotheses to explain why the paradox elements of supply chain transparency and supply chain coordination affect firms' ability to reduce their indirect supply chains GHG emissions. Using a two-stage method based on data from Refinitiv and CDP for 2002 to 2021, the authors test this study’s hypotheses through panel regression analyses.

While greater transparency experience with scope 3 emissions disclosure, GSCM practices and broader supply chain engagement are all associated with higher levels of scope 3 emissions levels, both long-term transparency experience and GSCM practices are also associated with relative reductions in scope 3 emissions over time.

Given growing pressures on firms to demonstrate both transparency and legitimacy regarding their scope 3 emissions, firms must understand the characteristics of this paradox as this has implications for how emissions performance is perceived and managed. This study's results suggested that firms need to take both a long-term perspective and effectively communicate the differences involved in reporting their emissions performance to avoid unwarranted criticism.

Filling a gap in sustainable OSCM studies by providing large-scale quantitative insights into the relationships between organizing and performing, the authors demonstrate that the processes involved in firms' efforts of measuring and managing their indirect scope 3 emissions are paradoxically affected by whether performance outcomes are specified as annual absolute levels of scope 3 emissions, or relative changes over time.

Through the identification and investigation of the organisational paradoxes in lean, the purpose of this paper is to deepen the understanding of lean implementation intricacies, and contribute to sustaining lean in companies.

Case study based on semi-structured interviews with participants in lean conversion from three companies in Denmark. The companies come from different business sectors: public transport, healthcare and finance.

This study identifies three types of organisational paradoxes in lean: organising, performing and belonging. The study also points to a range managerial responses used for dealing with the three paradoxes and facilitating lean transformation.

This is a theory development paper which increases the understanding regarding the role of the organisational paradoxes in facilitating or hindering lean transformation.

The study generates insights which help managers identify and deal with the individual motivations for opposing lean practices, and thus facilitates lean transformation.

This study adds clarity to the process of managing lean implementation by identifying three different motivations for people to oppose lean transformation. The study also recommends managerial actions for dealing with each situation.

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.

The highly uncertain and turbulent environments nowadays intensify the paradoxical effects of supply base concentration (SBC) on improving cost efficiency while increasing idiosyncratic risk (IR). Digitalization is regarded as a remedy for this paradox, yet digitization's potentially curative effect has not been empirically tested. Leveraging the lenses of paradox theory and information processing theory (IPT), this study explores how two distinct dimensions of digitalization, i.e. digitalization intensity (DI) and digitalization breadth (DB), reconcile the paradoxical effects of SBC.

Using a panel dataset of 1,238 Chinese manufacturing firms in the period of 2012–2020, this study utilizes fixed-effects regression models to test the proposed hypotheses.

The authors discover that SBC enhances a firm's cost efficiency but induces greater IR. More importantly, there is evidence that DI restrains the amplifying effect of SBC on IR. However, DB weakens the enhancing effect of SBC on cost efficiency and aggravates the SBC's exacerbating effect on IR.

This study advances the understanding of the paradoxical effects of SBC on cost efficiency and IR from a paradox theory perspective. More importantly, to the best of the authors' knowledge, the authors' study is the first to untangle the differential roles of DI and DB in reconciling the paradox of SBC. This study also provides practitioners with nuanced insights into how the practitioners should use appropriate tactics to deploy digital technologies effectively.

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.

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.

Grounded in paradox theory, and with the objective of structuring and extending existing knowledge of conflicts of interest (e.g. trade-offs) in packaging logistics, the purpose of this paper is to identify categories of paradoxical tensions in packaging systems used in supply chains, and to develop a conceptual framework that describes these categories.

This research uses a theory building approach. It develops a conceptual framework of paradoxical tensions for packed products in supply chains. It revises and extends current knowledge in this domain by applying paradox theory from organisational research.

The paper develops a generic, conceptual framework that identifies, categorises and describes packed product paradoxes on two system levels: supply chain and company levels. The categories of paradoxes refer to performing, organising, belonging and learning.

The framework provides a new theoretical explanation of conflicts of interest in packaging logistics in terms of paradoxical tensions related to packed products in supply chains. It structures and increases general understanding of such tensions within and between actors in a supply chain. The paper also discusses differences in terminology between tensions which are possible to settle and those which lead to paradoxes.

The framework provides a structure for analysing the organisational impact of strategic packaging decisions. It can help highlight different stakeholders' organisational constraints related to packaging.

The framework's systematic categorisation of four types of paradoxical tensions, with thorough descriptions of the meaning of packed product paradoxes of each type, offers an expanded and in-depth explanation of the organisational impacts of packed products in supply chains.

This study investigates paradox-responding strategies and enabling mechanisms in humanitarian temporary supply networks (TSNs). Given the high stakes involved in life-saving supply networks, understanding how diverse, often under-resourced, organisations jointly tackle paradoxical tensions under time pressure is crucial.

A qualitative single case study approach is adopted and a TSN deployed to meet shelter needs following the 2015 Nepal earthquake is selected as the case. The authors use diverse secondary data sources to establish how the TSN responded to paradoxical tensions.

Results show that paradox-responding in humanitarian TSNs is ongoing, dynamic and a collective effort. Most strategies entail tackling the paradoxical tensions at the same time, using the same TSN structure, but there are differences in the treatment of the paradoxical elements. Additionally, the authors find that the execution of the responding strategies is enabled by the appropriate types of network-level mechanisms which can vary in novelty, complexity, depth and reach.

This study provides rich explanations of paradox-responding and develops insights into collective action within TSNs. However, further research is needed to extend and refine insights given the single-case setting design.

This study develops a framework of paradox-responding strategies and a corresponding mix of enabling mechanisms that can guide decision-makers in the humanitarian sector when deploying TSNs.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that investigates paradox-responding strategies in humanitarian TSNs in particular and enabling mechanisms in general.

This paper makes a case for the investigation of organizational paradoxes through the analysis of documents. After having presented what paradoxes are and the methodological challenges of studying them, the paper turns to document research, with emphasis on its potential contribution to paradox research. More specifically, document research typically provides ready-to-code data in a nonintrusive manner, allowing for the potential longitudinal, multilevel and multivoice analysis of organizational paradoxes and their management, in practice. To illustrate this, the purpose of this paper is to explore exemplar research based on multiple approaches to the study of different paradoxes in/around various documents and sets a research agenda.

Exemplar research on paradoxes using organizational documents as central data are presented. This highlights the range of documents and analytical strategies that can be used to explore organizations’ discursive management of paradoxes, as well as the roles documents can play in organizational contexts marked by different types of paradoxes.

A research agenda is developed, formulated around the needs to study paradoxes within documents and around them; grasp the discursive strategies deployed in documents to deal with paradoxes and/or the action of documents in contexts marked by paradoxes; follow the organizational processes involving documents, paying special attention to the paradoxes surrounding the development, adoption and appropriation of documents; and compare paradoxes in documents and those around the documents’ mobilization.

Despite growing interest in organizational paradoxes, reflections on methodological approaches to exploring them remain scarce and alternative methods largely unexplored. This paper makes the following proposition: organizational documents (strategic plans, annual reports, policies, websites, etc.) can provide a valuable entry point to explore organizational paradoxes.

The study aims to understand how practicing organizational performance evaluation (OPE) is related to the performance paradox (tensions between creative freedom and survival challenges) in “evaluation-hesitant” cultural and creative industries (CCI) organizations.

Mixed methods research, consisting of moderation analyses and unstructured expert interviews.

A conceptual model is developed to explain how creative freedom and survival challenges affect OPE in “evaluation-hesitant” CCI organizations.

The authors bring a new understanding to the factors that contribute to evaluation-hesitance in CCI. The paper contributes to discussing both the theory of paradox and flow theory in explaining the relations between OPE, creative freedom and survival challenges.