Deparadoxification and value focus in sharing ventures: Concealing paradoxes in strategic decision-making

This study investigates how sharing ventures address the paradox of doing good versus doing harm in their strategic decision-making. The doing good versus doing harm paradox refers to the difficulty of sharing ventures to balance the aim to benefit society and the environment while minimizing potential adverse effects. Understanding and addressing this paradox is crucial for promoting sustainable and responsible decision-making. Our thematic content analysis of 38 in-depth interviews with founders and senior managers of sharing ventures in four European countries finds that these ventures align along three distinct value focus types in their decision-making and use five mechanisms to conceal paradoxes related to balancing social/environmental and economic contradictions. By surfacing the importance of sharing ventures' value focus and resultant mechanisms to deparadoxify, our findings provide insights into organisational paradox and the sharing economy, specifically the purposeful concealment of paradox as a counterintuitive choice for remaining actionable in decision contexts.