Paradox as a Metatheoretical Perspective
Sharpening the Focus and Widening the Scope / Lewis, Marian
- 2014
- 128-149
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...