IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/scaman/v32y2016i1p33-44.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

In search of a creative space: A conceptual framework of synthesizing paradoxical tensions

Author

Listed:
  • Gaim, Medhanie
  • Wåhlin, Nils

Abstract

We examine paradoxes in organizations and the organizations’ ability to deal with the resulting paradoxical tensions. Paradoxes constitute contradictory yet interrelated organizational demands that exist simultaneously, with the resulting tensions persisting over time. Irrespective of the prevailing evidence that engaging paradoxes leads to peak performance in the short-term, which reinforces long-term success, the question of how this might be done remains perplexing. Thus, based on pragmatic philosophy, this paper aims to increase our understanding of what constitutes a paradox and suggests a conceptual framework from which organizations and their members can frame and cope with tensions that result from paradoxes. Specifically, we conceptually map a way to achieve a synthesis of paradoxical tensions that is informed by design thinking. This synthesis is said to occur when competing demands are simultaneously fulfilled to their full potential. In this paper, design thinking – as a management concept – is used to refer to the interplay between perspective, structure, process, and mindset. It provides an alternative framing of how organizations approach paradoxes and deal with the resulting tensions.

Suggested Citation

  • Gaim, Medhanie & Wåhlin, Nils, 2016. "In search of a creative space: A conceptual framework of synthesizing paradoxical tensions," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 33-44.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:scaman:v:32:y:2016:i:1:p:33-44
    DOI: 10.1016/j.scaman.2015.12.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956522115000792
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.scaman.2015.12.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James G. March, 1991. "Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 2(1), pages 71-87, February.
    2. Michael Tushman & Wendy K. Smith & Robert Chapman Wood & George Westerman & Charles O'Reilly, 2010. "Organizational designs and innovation streams," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 19(5), pages 1331-1366, October.
    3. Janssens, Maddy & Steyaert, Chris, 1999. "The world in two and a third way out? The concept of duality in organization theory and practice," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 121-139, June.
    4. Paul S. Adler & Barbara Goldoftas & David I. Levine, 1999. "Flexibility Versus Efficiency? A Case Study of Model Changeovers in the Toyota Production System," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 10(1), pages 43-68, February.
    5. O'Reilly, Charles A., III & Tushman, Michael L., 2013. "Organizational Ambidexterity: Past, Present and Future," Research Papers 2130, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    6. Constantine Andriopoulos & Marianne W. Lewis, 2009. "Exploitation-Exploration Tensions and Organizational Ambidexterity: Managing Paradoxes of Innovation," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(4), pages 696-717, August.
    7. Anonymous, 1986. "Organized Symposia," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 197-200, July.
    8. David Barry & Claus Rerup, 2006. "Going Mobile: Aesthetic Design Considerations from Calder and the Constructivists," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(2), pages 262-276, April.
    9. Roger L. M. Dunbar & William H. Starbuck, 2006. "Learning to Design Organizations and Learning from Designing Them," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(2), pages 171-178, April.
    10. R. A. Thiétart & B. Forgues, 1995. "Chaos Theory and Organization," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 19-31, February.
    11. Tse, Terence, 2013. "Paradox resolution: A means to achieve strategic innovation," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 682-696.
    12. Miguel Pina, e Cunha & Rego, Arménio, 2010. "Complexity, simplicity, simplexity," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 85-94, April.
    13. Youngjin Yoo & Richard J. Boland & Kalle Lyytinen, 2006. "From Organization Design to Organization Designing," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(2), pages 215-229, April.
    14. Nicolai J. Foss, 2003. "Selective Intervention and Internal Hybrids: Interpreting and Learning from the Rise and Decline of the Oticon Spaghetti Organization," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 14(3), pages 331-349, June.
    15. Miron-Spektor, Ella & Gino, Francesca & Argote, Linda, 2011. "Paradoxical frames and creative sparks: Enhancing individual creativity through conflict and integration," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 229-240.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Åkesson, Maria & Sørensen, Carsten & Eriksson, Carina Ihlström, 2018. "Ambidexterity under digitalization: A tale of two decades of new media at a Swedish newspaper," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 276-288.
    2. Manzoni, Beatrice & Volker, Leentje, 2017. "Paradoxes and management approaches of competing for work in creative professional service firms," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 23-35.
    3. Gaim, Medhanie, 2018. "On the emergence and management of paradoxical tensions: The case of architectural firms," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 497-518.
    4. Shengmin Liu & Hongguo Wei & Huanhuan Xin & Pengfan Cheng, 2022. "Task conflict and team creativity: The role of team mindfulness, experiencing tensions, and information elaboration," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 39(4), pages 1367-1398, December.
    5. Brorström, Sara, 2017. "The paradoxes of city strategy practice: Why some issues become strategically important and others do not," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 213-221.
    6. Leonie Schulte, 2022. "Integrating immediate gains with sustainable performance: systematic review of paradox at the intersection of strategic management and innovation," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 72(4), pages 1209-1247, December.
    7. Henriksen, Thomas Duus & Nielsen, Rikke Kristine & Vikkelsø, Signe & Bévort, Frans & Mogensen, Mette, 2021. "A paradox rarely comes alone a quantitative approach to investigating knotted leadership paradoxes in SMEs," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 37(1).
    8. Lindberg, Ola & Rantatalo, Oscar & Hällgren, Markus, 2017. "Making sense through false syntheses: Working with paradoxes in the reorganization of the Swedish police," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 175-184.
    9. Miron-Spektor, Ella & Emich, Kyle J. & Argote, Linda & Smith, Wendy K., 2022. "Conceiving opposites together: Cultivating paradoxical frames and epistemic motivation fosters team creativity," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Medhanie Gaim & Nils Wåhlin & Miguel Pina e Cunha & Stewart Clegg, 2018. "Analyzing competing demands in organizations: a systematic comparison," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 7(1), pages 1-16, December.
    2. Gaim, Medhanie, 2018. "On the emergence and management of paradoxical tensions: The case of architectural firms," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 497-518.
    3. Jan Ossenbrink & Joern Hoppmann & Volker H. Hoffmann, 2019. "Hybrid Ambidexterity: How the Environment Shapes Incumbents’ Use of Structural and Contextual Approaches," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(6), pages 1319-1348, November.
    4. Jan Ossenbrink & Joern Hoppmann, 2019. "Polytope Conditioning and Linear Convergence of the Frank–Wolfe Algorithm," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 44(1), pages 1319-1348, February.
    5. Mile Katic & Renu Agarwal, 2018. "The Flexibility Paradox: Achieving Ambidexterity in High-Variety, Low-Volume Manufacturing," Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, Springer;Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management, vol. 19(1), pages 69-86, March.
    6. Olga Kassotaki, 2022. "Review of Organizational Ambidexterity Research," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(1), pages 21582440221, March.
    7. Hu, Jing & Wang, Yilin & Liu, Shengnan & Song, Mingshun, 2023. "Mechanism of latecomer enterprises’ technological catch-up in technical standards alliances – An ambidextrous innovation perspective," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    8. Koryak, Oksana & Lockett, Andy & Hayton, James & Nicolaou, Nicos & Mole, Kevin, 2018. "Disentangling the antecedents of ambidexterity: Exploration and exploitation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 413-427.
    9. Strobl, Andreas & Bauer, Florian & Matzler, Kurt, 2020. "The impact of industry-wide and target market environmental hostility on entrepreneurial leadership in mergers and acquisitions," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 55(2).
    10. Christine Chou & Steven O. Kimbrough, 2016. "An agent-based model of organizational ambidexterity decisions and strategies in new product development," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 4-46, March.
    11. Yasser Alizadeh & Antonie J. Jetter, 2019. "Pathways for Balancing Exploration and Exploitation in Innovations: A Review and Expansion of Ambidexterity Theory," International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management (IJITM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 16(05), pages 1-33, August.
    12. Olli-Pekka Kauppila & Michiel P. Tempelaar, 2016. "The Social-Cognitive Underpinnings of Employees’ Ambidextrous Behaviour and the Supportive Role of Group Managers’ Leadership," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(6), pages 1019-1044, September.
    13. Mark Ebers, 2017. "Organisationsmodelle für Innovation [Organizing for Innovation]," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 69(1), pages 81-109, March.
    14. Katsuki Aoki & Miriam Wilhelm, 2017. "The Role of Ambidexterity in Managing Buyer–Supplier Relationships: The Toyota Case," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(6), pages 1080-1097, December.
    15. Matthews, Lane & Heyden, Mariano L.M. & Zhou, Dan, 2022. "Paradoxical transparency? Capital market responses to exploration and exploitation disclosure," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(1).
    16. Lysander Weiss & Dominik Kanbach, 2022. "Toward an integrated framework of corporate venturing for organizational ambidexterity as a dynamic capability," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 72(4), pages 1129-1170, December.
    17. Beniamino Callegari & Ranvir S. Rai, 2021. "Blending in: A Case Study of Transitional Ambidexterity in the Financial Sector," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-18, February.
    18. Feiz Abadi, Javad & Gligor, David M. & Alibakhshi Motlagh, Somayeh & Srivastava, Raj, 2024. "When and under what conditions ambidextrous supply chains prove effective? Insights from simulation and empirical studies," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    19. Schnellbächer, Benedikt & Heidenreich, Sven & Wald, Andreas, 2019. "Antecedents and effects of individual ambidexterity – A cross-level investigation of exploration and exploitation activities at the employee level," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 442-454.
    20. Martin Owusu Ansah & Nicholas Addai-Boamah & Abeeku Bylon Bamfo & Lucy Afeafa Ry-Kottoh, 2022. "Organizational ambidexterity and financial performance in the banking industry: evidence from a developing economy," Journal of Financial Services Marketing, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 27(3), pages 250-263, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:scaman:v:32:y:2016:i:1:p:33-44. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/872/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.