1293: A Configurational Approach to Paradox: How Cultural Leaders Deal with Three Paradoxical Demands (19036)

Organizational leaders face a multitude of opposing yet interdependent demands arising from conflicting goals, pluralistic missions, and divergent expectations. Yet, paradox research has so far focused only on pairs of two paradoxical demands. This paper contrasts this research by presenting empirical evidence from an in-depth study of British 42 museum leaders that deal not with two, but three opposing yet persistently interdependent demands for Culture, Commerce, and Community. Current research that has so far focused on leaders' passive paradox acceptance, oscillation between two demands, and transcendence as a discreet outcome of paradox management. Rather than passive acceptance, we show that the cultural leaders in our sample used the practice of actively arranging compatibility between the three paradoxical demands through setting out their elements, and orienting them towards each other. Rather than oscillation between two demands, leaders created complementarity by situating the relationships between the three paradoxical demands, and forging relationships between them. Finally, rather than achieving a discreet state of transcendence, the leaders in our sample continuously transcended the tensions between the three paradoxical demands by orchestrating their elements, and creating interdependence between them. We discuss the implications of the leaders’ dealing with three rather than two paradoxical demands for the literature.

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