Management Paradoxes: A Relational View

Abstract

Paradox is gaining more and more pervasiveness in and around organizations, thus increasing the need for an approach to management that allows both researchers and practitioners to address these paradoxes. We attempt to contribute to this project by suggesting a relational approach to paradoxes. To this aim, we first present the state of the art of research on management paradoxes and then explain four regularities surfaced in the literature on this topic. We conclude by arguing that taking these regularities as a whole allows us to suggest a new perspective on paradoxes - one with a positive regard for the co-presence of opposites but that takes seriously the potential relationship between these.