Strategy and organizations feature persistent tensions, such as innovating for tomorrow’s growth while capitalizing on an existing business model or focusing on broader societal implications of firms' actions while paying attention to shareholder returns. Moreover, contemporary (grand) challenges unfolding in society create paradoxes that affect organizations and their members.
However, traditional strategic and management thinking has urged leaders to make clear choices and focus on either of these competing priorities. However, choosing one side results in suboptimal outcomes. The key to a firm's success is pursuing competing goals simultaneously.
Therefore, strategizing and organizing to navigate paradoxes are increasingly important. Rather than optimizing in the short term, navigating a paradox emphasizes leveraging interdependence and recurrently facilitating synergies. While research in the area has advanced tremendously, actionable know-what and know-how lag behind.
Against this background, the VU Knowledge Hub of Navigating (Strategic) Paradoxes aims to close this research practice gap with the goal to generate and disseminate actionable knowledge while enriching academia, business, and society.
Four themes will feature prominently.
- The nature and forms of paradoxes
- Where do they come from? Internal and external evaluations? How can others bring one into a paradoxical situation?
- How are paradoxes embedded in and triggered by broader systems? How can be understand links between paradoxes better? Are there hierarchies between paradoxes?
- In which forms do persistent tensions materialize? What are their dynamics?
- Approaches to deal with Paradoxes
- How to leverage and create agency to respond to paradoxes?
- How do structural, cultural, and leadership approaches interact?
- Are there collective paradoxical frames to handle persistent tensions
- Work on Paradoxes in Different Contexts
- Digital strategies and phenomena, e.g., emerging technologies, AI, platforms
- Grand societal challenges, wicked problems or systems, e.g. sustainability, diversity, extreme contexts
- Global strategizing and organizing, e.g. cross-cultural differences
- Leadership, e.g. leading the internal and the external environment
- Education
- The (further) development of educational and training to educate students, academics, and professionals.
- Development of frameworks and tools to address paradoxes.
- Evaluate paradoxical thinking as a key skill to navigate a complex world.
