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Implementing automatic sorting operations in the parcel delivery industry can dramatically improve both capacity and service quality but demands radical and complex organizational change. The present in-depth grounded theory study examined a change process of this kind within one of the few global companies in the parcel delivery sector, focusing on three European hubs where automatic sorting had recently been introduced.

Grounded theory methodology, which facilitates the gradual emergence and dialogical interpretation of empirically grounded theoretical concepts, was particularly suited to the current project's open-ended research design and the hybrid (prescriptive but also constructive) nature of the change process under study. The investigation comprised iterative cycles of data collection, open coding, selective coding and theoretical coding over a three-year period.

In keeping with the dual nature of the change underway, a set of tensions were identified between pairs of opposite poles: manual vs automated, planned vs emergent and corporate vs site. The management of these tensions, which leveraged both prescriptive and sensemaking approaches, was found to trigger knowledge production, facilitating a gradual transition from high to low uncertainty and, consequently, progressive movement along the continuum between each pair of competing poles. Within this process, the industrial engineering function acted as an agent of change with a key orchestrating role.

As one of the first in-depth grounded theory analyses of tension management, this study contributes to the relatively recent debate on the recognition, analysis and handling of tensions and paradoxes in organizational change, suggesting innovative criteria for successful change management and identifying promising new avenues for research. From a managerial perspective, the study outcomes suggest that explicit recognition of uncertainty and tensions in organizational change can pave the way for solutions based on agility and continuous organizational learning.

This paper aims to advance the paradox management perspective by applying it to open innovation networks in Finland and argues that paradox management is an important explicit logic to consider in the management of open innovation.

Interviews sought the views of diverse network participants, including companies, universities, and government agencies.

The open innovation networks exhibited many of the same tensions discussed in innovation initiatives within organizations, but additional complexities arose from both internal and external factors.

The study examined open innovation networks when the collaboration in the networks was still in early phases. Thus, the study does not capture the paradoxes, underlying tensions, and management approaches as they change in later phases.

The open innovation networks require the ability to excel in managing a set of paradoxical tensions using a complex repertoire of approaches. Open innovation can be seen as an important way to create dynamicity and change, and if managers are able to manage tensions using a complex set of behavioral approaches, they can more likely achieve increased innovation.

The open innovation literature recognizes paradoxes but does not address their management directly. This paper deepens the understanding of paradoxical tensions and their management across open innovation networks that take the form of public‐private partnerships.

This study aims to identify knowledge-related tensions in remote work in higher education institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic and increase understanding of how such tensions can be managed.

The research was conducted as an inductive, qualitative study in the field of higher education in Finland. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews of 34 managers in two higher education institutions and analyzed using an inductive and interpretive analysis method.

The findings demonstrate that the knowledge-related challenges and opportunities during the remote work period of the COVID-19 pandemic in Finnish higher education institutions can be conceptualized as tensions involved in knowledge codification, knowledge silos and creating new knowledge. The study contributes to research by presenting a framework for managing knowledge-related tensions in remote work arrangements to benefit remote and hybrid work in knowledge-intensive organizations.

This paper increases the understanding of the tensions in remote work arrangements; the results can help managers understand the challenges and opportunities of remote knowledge work concerning their organization and thereby assist them in management and decision-making in complex operational environments.

This study adopted the little-used perspective of tensions to examine knowledge management issues. By examining the various affordances that remote work may allow for knowledge-intensive work and higher education institutions, the study contributes to a deepened understanding of knowledge work in remote contexts, the related tensions and their management.

The purpose of this paper is to reframe the debate about the tension between management control and employee empowerment by drawing on a theory of paradox. Reframing the problem in this way draws attention to the variety of ways in which organisations can attend to both control and empowerment simultaneously.

The authors undertake a conceptual examination of the relationship between empowerment and control using a paradox theory lens. First, the authors bring together two dimensions of empowerment – structural empowerment and psychological empowerment – and combine them to produce three new empowerment “scenarios”: illusory empowerment, obstructed empowerment and authentic empowerment. For each of these three scenarios, the central tenets of paradox theory are applied in order to explain the nature of the paradoxical tension, anticipated behavioural responses and the resulting challenges for ongoing management control.

The authors find that neither structural nor psychological empowerment alone can account for variation in behavioural responses to management control. The conceptual analysis highlights the interplay of socio-ideological control and systems of accountability in generating psychological empowerment and demonstrates that this does not come at a cost to management control but instead results in a reduction in the scale and scope of ongoing challenges.

This paper contributes a new theoretical perspective on the classic problem of tension between management control and employee empowerment. Rather than positioning control and empowerment either as a managerial choice or dialectic, the authors identify three different ways in which organisations can engage with both paradoxical elements simultaneously.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how tension management as a means of achieving compromise and overcoming minor conflicts reduces the effects of the opportunism and bargaining costs of relationships on the evaluation of business partners. The paper proposes and tests a theoretical model with a full-information approach using structural equation modeling.

The data set was based on 312 observations from a unique survey based on a business-to-business relationship sample in Sweden. The measurements reflect the effects of partner opportunism, bargaining costs, and tension management on partner evaluations.

The findings corroborate that partner opportunism and bargaining costs have a negative impact on partner evaluation. In addition, the model shows that tension management weakens the negative effects of opportunism and bargaining costs on the evaluation.

This study offers evidence on how negative effects are reduced through intervening constructs. With most studies focusing on the positive side of relationships, this paper makes an important contribution to the literature through not only describing negative effects, but also how these can be decreased.

While localized small-series production is a significant opportunity, various tensions challenge implementation in high-cost contexts. This paper explores how managers view and respond to different tensions in small-series production implementation by adopting a paradox-based perspective.

The paper presents a multiple case study addressing small-series production within EU's apparel industry, as key context to address managerial awareness, and responses to tensions regarding location and supply network configuration decisions. Seven cases were selected for variation in customization and implementation (early/established), ownership, location and company size, to identity commonalities.

The study highlights performing tensions related to sustainability, and risk, in addition to confirming traditional goal-related tensions predominantly impacting small volume production. With on-demand/custom production, tensions include costs in conflict with process scale, and several process-related tensions (flexibility, expansion/development, risk management). Identified multidimensional responses do not include location or structural decisions, instead focusing on synthesis, through product-operations efficiency, knowledge development and process innovation and supply chain collaboration. Temporal separation is found with customization, including reducing product/process complexity short-term with enhancing process development, which suggests latent learning tensions and limited awareness.

Future research should address the extent to which tensions can be resolved or remain paradoxical, as well as dynamic decision-making and latent tensions.

The paper shows how paradox theory facilitates a deeper understanding of complex network configuration decisions, including reshoring/localization. The findings identify organizing tensions/elements and elaborate upon performing/performing-organizing tensions suggested with small-series production, location decisions and supply chain management.

The purpose of this study is to elaborate on the management, sources, levels of strength and dynamics of inherent tension in coopetition between small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs).

An embedded single-case design is applied in the study. Two manufacturing SMEs in coopetition are studied. The units of analysis are their past dyadic coopetition with other competitors, their present coopetition with each other and their view of possible dyadic coopetition with other partners in the future.

This study addresses the call for more research on coopetition and tension dynamics. It gives longitudinal insight into the changes of a coopetitive relationship through the evolution of tension inherently present in the relationship. Furthermore, the results show that a partial separation of the cooperative and competitive dimensions enables entrepreneurs’ integration of a contradictory logic. The successful management of tension also relies on mechanisms for mutual value appropriation, which eventually enhances the ability to embrace contradictions.

This study contributes to the limited knowledge on tension management by showing how partners in coopetition apply different tension management principles or combinations of principles due to how the tension in the relationship evolves. Furthermore, on a practical level, it introduces a mapping or configuration scheme to identify the sources and levels of strength of inherent tension, enhancing coopetition partners’ ability to monitor their relationship over time.

This study examines how an externally imposed management control system (MCS) – hospital accreditation – influences the salience of organisational tensions and consequently attitudes of management towards the system.

Data are collected using a case study of a large public hospital in Spain. In-depth interviews were conducted with 27 senior and middle managers across different functions. Relying on the organisational dualities classification in the literature, tensions are unpacked and analysed.

Evidence is presented of how hospital accreditation increases the salience of organisational tensions arising from exposition of the organisational dualities of learning, performing, organising and belonging. Salient tensions were evident in the ambivalent attitudes of management towards the hospital accreditation system.

The role of mandatory external control systems in exposing ambivalence and tensions will be of interest to organisational managers.

The study extends the management control literature by identifying an active role for an external MCS (accreditation) in increasing the salience of organisational tensions and triggering ambivalence. Contrary to the prior literature, the embedding of both poles of an organisational duality into the MCS is not a necessary precondition for increased tension salience. The range of attitudes towards MCSs beyond those specified in the previous literature (positive/negative/neutral) is extended to include ambivalence.

Co-creation as a collaborative process between organizations and customers generates unique value for both internal and external stakeholders for the company. Research generally examines and portrays customer-company co-creation as a balanced and harmonious relationship. However, a successful co-creation strategy involves understanding the shared interests of the parties and resolving tensions between internal and external stakeholders to avoid co-destruction. This study aims to draw on the intersection of organizational behavior and marketing literature and to examine shared interests and conflicting tensions involved in the co-creation in the context of sports entertainment. This context allows the researchers to unpack and present a more complex process of co-creation that fosters co-creativity and innovation.

Based on a qualitative case-based approach of a major university in the USA, the authors draw on interviews and observations from their athletic administration and fans engaged in a men’s Division I team through an entire season.

This qualitative study illustrates an alternative, more complex dilemma of co-creating emotional and symbolic value based on shared interests while reconciling conflicting internal and external stakeholder interests. The findings suggest a tug of war based on tensions, where management adopted contrasting managerial strategies ranging from attempting to reconcile tension through organic co-creation to controlled manufactured creation.

Emotional and symbolic game experience value is an interdependent process which cannot be created without consumer engagement. Both emotional and symbolic values are enhanced during games to the extent consumers perceive participation in the creative pre-game stages.

This study draws on sports entertainment to identify sources of tension in co-creation and discuss type of solutions among internal and external stakeholders.

Managing supply chains (SCs) for sustainability often results in conflicting demands, which can be conceptualized as sustainability tensions. This paper studies sustainability tensions in electronics SC contexts and the related management responses by applying a paradox perspective.

A single case study on the electronics SC is conducted with companies and third-party organizations as embedded units of analysis, using semi-structured interviews that are triangulated with publicly available data.

The study identifies tension elements (learning, belonging, organizing and economic performing) conflicting with general social–ecological objectives in the electronics SC. The results indicate a hierarchal structure among the sustainability tensions in SC contexts. The management responses of contextualization and resolution are assigned to the identified tensions.

Framing social–ecological objectives with their conflicting elements as paradoxical tensions enables organizations and SCs to develop better strategies for responding to complex sustainability issues in SC contexts.

The study contributes toward filling the gap on paradoxical sustainability tensions in SCs. Empirical insights are gained from different actors in the electronics SC. The level of emergence and interconnectedness of sustainability tensions in a larger SC context is explored through an outside-in perspective.