The DOI matches its Crossref record; 12 of the 12 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Paradox as a Metatheoretical Perspective: Sharpening the Focus and Widening the Scope
Abstract
Organizations are rife with tensions—flexibility versus control, exploration versus exploitation, autocracy versus democracy, social versus financial, global versus local. Researchers have long responded using contingency theory, asking “Under what conditions should managers emphasize either A or B?” Yet increasingly studies apply a paradox perspective, shifting the question to “How can we engage both A and B simultaneously?” Despite accumulating exemplars, commonalities across paradox studies remain unclear, and ties unifying this research community weak. To energize further uses of a paradox perspective, we build from past reviews to explicate its role as a metatheory. Contrasting this lens to contingency theory, we illustrate its metatheoretical nature. We then dive deeper to sharpen the focus and widen the scope of a paradox perspective. Identifying core elements viewed from a paradox perspective—underlying assumptions, central concepts, nature of interrelationships and boundary conditions—offers a guide, informing the practice of paradox research. Next, we illustrate diverse uses of this lens. We conclude by exploring implications and next steps, stressing the rising need for paradox research, as complexity, change, and ambiguity intensify demands for both/and approaches in theory and practice.
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Citations
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Cited by
Paradox research in management science: Looking back to move forward
Schad, J., Lewis, M. W., Raisch, S., & Smith, W. K. (2016) · Academy of Management Annals · doi:10.5465/19416520.2016.1162422 · Cited by 1,385
Self-citationContradictions, Dialectics, and Paradoxes in Organizations: A Constitutive Approach
Putnam, L. L., Fairhurst, G. T., & Banghart, S. (2016) · Academy of Management Annals · doi:10.5465/19416520.2016.1162421 · Cited by 1,116
Seeing the Forest and the Trees: How a Systems Perspective Informs Paradox Research
Schad, J., & Bansal, P. (2018) · Journal of Management Studies · doi:10.1111/joms.12398 · Cited by 266
The role of HRM in developing sustainable organizations: Contemporary challenges and contradictions
Podgorodnichenko, N., Edgar, F., & McAndrew, I. (2020) · Human Resource Management Review · doi:10.1016/j.hrmr.2019.04.001 · Cited by 160
Paradoxes and Dual Processes: A Review and Synthesis
Keller, J., & Sadler‐Smith, E. (2019) · International Journal of Management Reviews · doi:10.1111/ijmr.12200 · Cited by 66
Handling tensions in human resource management: Insights from paradox theory
Keegan, A., Brandl, J., & Aust, I. (2019) · German Journal of Human Resource Management: Zeitschrift für Personalforschung · doi:10.1177/2397002218810312 · Cited by 49
Cardinali, S., Pagano, A., Carloni, E., Giovannetti, M., & Governatori, L. (2023) · Journal of Service Theory and Practice · doi:10.1108/jstp-06-2022-0132 · Cited by 33
A Figure is Worth a Thousand Words: The role of visualization in paradox theorizing
Pradies, C., Berti, M., Pina e Cunha, M., Rego, A., Tunarosa, A., & Clegg, S. (2023) · Organization Studies · doi:10.1177/01708406231161998 · Cited by 26
Marathe, A. S., & Piper, A. M. (2025) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3757666 · Cited by 21
Metadata
- Authors
- Lewis, M. W., & Smith, W. K.
- Venue
- The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2014-03-05
- Volume
- 50
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 127-149
- ISSN
- 0021-8863 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-6879
- OpenAlex
- W2102079303
- Cited by
- 582
- References
- 12
- FWCI
- 51.65
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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