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Seeking to move beyond limits in order to solve problems is an important part of organizational learning and is therefore potentially emancipatory. Communicating across boundaries in order to expand capabilities might contribute to understanding and therefore to community building. When limits to current capacities are experienced, individuals who admit their own limitations set the stage for both organizational learning and emancipatory processes. Stories of two different departments in the same organization are contrasted in terms of the micro‐emancipatory processes that led to deliberate change in one and not the other. Attention to, and respect for, the three key functions of boundaries is proposed to make a difference in experiences of autonomy and community.

The purpose of this paper is to examine proposals for a Tobin tax to curb currency speculation in global markets.

Financial markets are viewed from the perspective of Michel Serres.

Managing volatility is really about managing relationships that can buffer governments against risk. The resolution of a paradox is embracing the paradox.

The work of Michel Serres has not previously been used in analyses of global currency markets. His theory of parasitical relationships offers a novel response to proposals for a Tobin tax.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the understanding of paradox in corporate strategy as unintended and unwanted consequences that must be overcome.

The paper builds upon the concept of patching and holds the paradoxical nature of multi‐business firms as essential for corporate evolution. It presents an inherent contradiction of corporate organising, closely related to interdependency between patches. These interdependencies vary according to whether the patches are similar or different and whether there exist competing views on centralisation and decentralisation within the company.

Studying reorganizations in a large Norwegian telecommunication corporation, we explore these interdependencies and find that for the corporation to move in novel ways, combinations have to display a dynamic close to the edge of chaos.

This paper presents new research on organizational “patching”.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate paradoxes in the development of organizational cultural problems – paradoxes that go undetected by people involved in them. The paper explains why these paradoxes remain undetected, and shows how their “invisibility” is a foundation for the development of “cultural problems”.

The approach is phenomenological, in that it explores how actors in cross‐cultural settings understand “difference” and thereby socially construct “cultural problems”.

Three interrelated paradoxes are uncovered: In dyads, actors perceive two‐way “cultural difference” as being one‐way. “Difference” thus becomes embodied in the “other” – “the other” alone is “different” and “difficult”. In bi‐cultural organizations, perceptions of “the other” as “different” and “difficult” encourage the formation of in‐groups and out‐groups that lead to “cultural problems”. “Difference” becomes embodied in “the others” while “cultural problems” that are the results of their own actions are also embedded in “the others”. In multicultural organizations these understandings break down. “Difference” becomes disembodied, and “cultural problems” become embodied in “difference”. More cultural differences thus engender fewer “cultural problems”.

The novel theoretical part of the study is so far untested. The paper thus calls for studies that apply the developed theoretical approach. The ethnographic observations that support the existence of the multicultural paradox are preliminary and ongoing.

The novel theoretical approach can immediately be applied to other organizational issues.

This paper introduces, for the first time, the Buddhist concept of anatta in the analysis of organizations. The theoretical approach is new, and can be applied to further studies of organizational problems.

The purpose of this paper is to present a dispositional model using self‐regulation as a foundation for the strategic leadership of organizational change.

This paper reviews the self‐regulation literature and regulatory‐focus theory in particular, and integrates this literature within the strategic leadership and organizational change literatures to present a dispositional model with propositions about the relationships between these literatures.

Strategic leadership of organizational change should allow for co‐existent states of both continuity and change. Leadership teams should include a mix of individuals with promotion and prevention foci of self‐regulation and should provide for a regulatory fit that cascades throughout the organization.

Leaders should increase their self‐awareness of promotion and prevention styles of self‐regulation and rely on a mix of individuals that increase the chances of valuing and enhancing both continuity and change in their organizations.

This paper integrates the self‐regulation literature and concepts into discussion and theoretical development in the area of leadership and organizational change.

The aim of the paper is to review and compare traditional and new institutional postulates in order to address some of the criticism that this theory has received.

Throughout this paper, five interesting paradoxes are presented in management contexts of change, the creation of competitive advantages, and organizational behaviour.

Light is shed on the integration efforts that seek to combine institutional theory with transaction cost theory, the resource‐based view of the firm, and the resource dependence theory.

The paper reviews the Oliver contribution work done around neoinstitutional theory. The paper offers a different view of organizational change, the creation of competitive advantage, and organizational behaviour.

Synchronicity was coined by Jung in 1955 to refer to the meaningful and acausal, or chance, correlation between an inner and outer event. Insofar as creativity is dependent upon chance for novelty, then creativity and synchronicity may have a supportive relationship. This paper uses narrative to explore the role of paradox in meaning, in chance, and in creativity. The nature of synchronicity, the relationship between synchronicity and creativity, and the implications of this relationship for management are discussed. Such implications include encouraging multiple points of view, understanding the role of emotion in creativity, allowing for movement across metaphorical and physical boundaries, honoring the body, and maintaining a lightness (with humor zand joy) with which to adapt to inevitable “accidents”.