Search results

As Ovid said, “There is nothing in the whole world which is permanent.” It is this very premise that frames the discoveries in this chapter and the compelling paradox it has raised. What began as a question of how performance is sustained, unveiled a collection of core organizational paradoxes. The findings ultimately suggest that sustained high performance is not a permanent state an organization achieves, but rather it is through perpetual movement and dynamic balance that sustainability occurs.

The idea of sustainability as movement is predicated on the ability of organizational members to move beyond the experience of paradox as an impediment to progress. Through holding three critical “movements” – agile/consistency, collective/individualism, and informative/inquiry – not as paradoxical, but as active polarities, the organizations in the study were able to transcend paradox, and take active steps to continuous achievement in outperforming their peers. The study, focused on a collection of hospitals across the Unites States, reveals powerful stories of care and service, of the profound grace of human capacity, and of clear actions taken to create significant results. All of this was achieved in an environment of great volatility, in essence an unbalanced system. It was the discovery of movement and ultimately of dynamic balancing that allowed the organizations to in this study to move beyond stasis to the continuous “state” of sustaining high performance.

In these times of globalisation, distances are getting smaller, enhancing the interactions between people of different cultural backgrounds. This is especially true in the area of tourism, a field that is shaped by manifold communication activities. The enormous increases in the numbers of Chinese tourists visiting Europe and other Western destinations require building up intercultural competencies to minimise conflicts and promote mutual understanding. It is therefore necessary to question one’s own cultural view, which is why the debate surrounding de-Westernisation is of crucial importance. The metaphor of the atmosphere – in Chinese qifen – offers a helpful access point to strengthen mutual understanding, because it creates a bridge between eastern and western thinking. Paul Watzlawick (1967) developed his well-known five axioms of communication, the second of which states that every communication has both content and a relational aspect, and the latter classifies the former. This chapter shows why the atmospheric dimension of communication should be established as the third axiom in order to understand communication holistically.

The focus of this chapter lies with women middle-level leaders. It reports on themes from women in leadership programmes designed and delivered by Barbara Watterston, through the lens of a programme especially developed for the Association of Independent Schools of South Australia (AISSA). This chapter begins by profiling a description of the programme. The main aim was providing women leaders with an opportunity to take stock of their careers, consider ongoing challenges impeding their work as school leaders, and identify options for the future. After the programme finished, volunteers were invited to write a narrative encapsulating their career journey. Three women leaders volunteered, and their insightful reflections regarding their career trajectories constitute a significant portion of this chapter. The final part of this chapter identifies three common themes that emerged from their stories, resonating with ideas which are frequently illuminated in similar programmes and research. These include the importance of ongoing professional learning to be a successful leader, gender-based barriers that caused the women to doubt their abilities and readiness for leadership, and the deep appreciation the women expressed from learning with and from like-minded other women leaders.

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.

This chapter investigates the mutual relationship between logic and paradox, showing that paradox is indispensable to test logic, as well as logic is necessary to extend our understanding of paradox. Firstly, I consider the lesson that organizational theory can draw from formal logic’s investigation of semantic and set-theoretic paradoxes. Subsequently, I survey the plural interpretations of the concept of “logic” in organizational theory (as logic of theory, logic of practice, and institutional logics). I argue that this plurality of meanings is not a source of confusion but offers an opportunity to illustrate different manifestations of, and ways to cope with, organizational paradoxes.

This chapter introduces the complex, dynamic, and technologically advanced new world of work and the challenges it creates for leadership. It reviews the leadership development literature against the backdrop of this new work context, identifying the philosophies and techniques that are no longer effective as well as those that are relevant or needed in order to assess and develop effective leadership. Key areas of attention are resilience, openness, adaptability, collaboration, and meaningful networks, all of which have implications for emotion management capabilities. It is now essential for leaders to develop and maintain a strong leader identity and self-awareness and adopt a growth mindset and sense of purpose to be sustainable and effective in their leadership.