Paradoxical leadership to enable strategic agility

California Management Review

Volumn 56, Issue 3, 2014, Pages 58-77

  Lewis, Marianne W ^a   Andriopoulos, Constantine ^b   Smith, Wendy K ^c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI   (United States)

^b CARDIFF UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

^c UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE   (United States)

Author keywords

Case study; Leadership; Strategic management

Indexed keywords

EID: 84901327684     PISSN: 00081256     EISSN: 21628564     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/cmr.2014.56.3.58     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. Yves Doz and Mikko Kosonen, "The Dynamics of Strategic Agility: Nokia's Rollercoaster Experience", California Management Review, 50/3(Spring 2008):95.
2. Mie Augier and David J. Teece, "Reflections on (Schumpeterian) Leadership: A Report on a Seminar on Leadership and Management Education", California Management Review, 47/2(Winter 2005):114-136. (Pubitemid 40373563)
3. See Mike Tushman, David Kiron, and Wendy Smith, "IBM Canada: Global Services", Harvard Business School Case Study, 2003.
4. Yves Doz and Mikko Kosonen, "Embedding Strategic Agility: A Leadership Agenda for Accelerating Business Model Renewal", Long Range Planning, 43/2-3(April 2010):370-382.
5. Existing research offers insights into varied forms of organizational tensions. Complexity studies, for instance, stresses the need for leadership to apply diverse, even contradictory behaviors to meet competing demands (e.g., Daniel R. Denison, Robert Hooijberg, and Robert E. Quinn, "Paradox and Performance: Toward a Theory of Behavioral Complexity in Managerial Leadership", Organization Science, 6/5(1995):524-540). (Pubitemid 126001534)
6. Ambidexterity research offers structural and cultural means of managing tensions between exploration and exploitation tensions (e.g., Justin J. P. Jansen, Dusya Vera, and Mary Crossan, "Strategic Leadership for Exploration and Exploitation: The Moderating Role of Environmental Dynamism", The Leadership Quarterly, 20/1(February 2009):5-18).
7. Likewise, dualities theory depicts tensions between action and structure, for example, as mutually enabling (e.g., Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (London: MacMillan, 1984)).
8. Wendy K. Smith and Marianne W. Lewis, "Toward a Theory of Paradox: A Dynamic Equilibrium Model of Organizing", Academy of Management Review, 36/2(April 2011):381-403.
9. For a more extensive review of organizational paradoxes, see Marianne W. Lewis, "Exploring Paradox: Toward a More Comprehensive Guide", Academy of Management Review, 25/4(October 2000):760-776;
10. Marshall Poole and Andrew Van de Ven, "Using Paradox to Build Management and Organization Theories", Academy of Management Review, 14/4, (October 1989): 562-578.
11. Wendy Smith, Andy Binns, and Michael Tushman "Complex Business Models: Managing Strategic Paradox Simultaneously", Long Range Planning, 43/2-3(2010):448-461.
12. Paul Adler, Barbara Goldoftas and David Levine, "Flexibility vs. Efficiency? A Case Study of Model Changeovers in the Toyota Product System", Organization Science, 10/1(January/February 1999):43-68;
13. Hirotaka Takeuchi, Emi Osono, and Norihiko Shimizu, "The Contradictions that Drive Toyota's Success", Harvard Business Review, 86/6(June 2008):96-104.
14. For studies of contradictory demands see Karl Weick, Kathleen Sutcliffe and David Obstfeld, "Organizing for High Reliability: Processes of Collective Mindfulness", in Robert. I. Sutton and Barry M. Staw, eds., Research in Organizational Behavior, 21(Stamford, CT: JAI Press, 1999), pp. 81-123;
15. Giovanni Gavetti and Daniel Levinthal, "Looking Forward and Looking Backward: Cognitive and Experiential Search", Administrative Science Quarterly, 45/1(March 2000):113-137;
16. Nitin Nohria and Michael Beer, "Cracking the Code of Change", Harvard Business Review, 78/3(May/June 2000):133-141.
17. Kathleen Eisenhardt, "Making Fast Strategic Decisions in High-Velocity Environments", Academy of Management Journal, 32/3(September 1989):543-576.
18. For example, see Constantine Andriopoulos and Marianne W. Lewis, "Exploitation-Exploration Tensions and Organizational Ambidexterity: Managing Paradoxes of Innovation", Organization Science, 20/4(July/August 2009):696-717;
19. Anil Gupta, Ken Smith, and Christina Shalley, "The Interplay between Exploration and Exploitation", Academy of Management Journal, 49/4(August 2006):693-706. (Pubitemid 44453114)
20. For example, see Wendy Smith and Mike Tushman, "Managing Strategic Contradictions: A Top Management Model for Managing Innovation Streams", Organization Science, 16/5(September/October 2005):522-536. (Pubitemid 41677005)
21. I. L. Janis, Groupthink (Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin, 1982).
22. Deborah Dougherty, "Interpretive Barriers to Successful Product Innovation in Large Firms", Organization Science, 3/2(May 1992):179-202.
23. Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn, Organizational Paradox and Transformation (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing, 1988) provides a collection of works stressing the link between managing paradox and sustaining high performance.
24. Roger Martin, The Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Thinking (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2009).
25. Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research (New York, NY: Aldine, 1967);
26. Matthew Miles and Michael Huberman, Qualitative Data Analysis (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994).
27. Lotte S. Lüscher and Marianne W. Lewis, "Organizational Change and Managerial Sensemaking: Working Through Paradox", Academy of Management Journal, 51/2(April 2008):221-240.
28. Homa Bahrami and Stuart Evans, "Super-Flexibility for Real-Time Adaptation: Perspectives from Silicon Valley", California Management Review, 53/3(Spring 2011):21-39.
29. Amy C. Edmonson, "Strategies for Learning from Failure", Harvard Business Review, 89/4(April 2011):48-55.
30. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End (New York, NY: Crown Business, 2004).
31. James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1994).
32. Michael L. Tushman and Wendy K. Smith, "Innovation Streams, Organization Designs, and Organizational Evolution", in M. L. Tushman and P. Anderson, eds., Managing Strategic Innovation and Change (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 2-17.
33. Steven C. Wheelwright and Kim B. Clark, Revolutionizing Product Development (New York, NY: Free Press, 1992).
34. Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr., In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies (New York, NY: Warner Books, 1982), p. 91
35. Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research (New York, NY: Aldine, 1967);
36. Miles and Huberman (1994), op. cit.