Managerial Dilemmas: Exploiting paradox for strategic by John Storey
By John Storey
In the course of the main serious recession for eighty years there's no use to argue that corporations are beset via dilemmas and paradoxes. self assurance in winning company types and within the underlying assumptions underpinning enterprise judgements over many many years has now been shaken. however it isn't sufficient to rail opposed to conceitedness and greed. inside of their very own (flawed) assumptions bankers and company leaders have been performing rationally. a big cause of the failure to expect and warn is that observers of enterprises are more likely to view agencies in phrases just like these hired by means of the folks who run them: as rational, brilliant and aim, while, in reality, they're frequently pressured and complicated, paradoxical and contradictory entities. Paradox is on the middle of ways organisations paintings (or don’t paintings) but the phenomenon has been surprisingly unstudied.
In an age of predicament and uncertainty, dilemmas and paradoxes are particularly obvious and general. The fascination and the promise of paradox is that there's additionally a feeling that there's a hidden fact entwined in the opposites. This we contend is a problem for leaders. the last word accountability of management is to make feel of those and to deal with them in a reliable demeanour. This demands a brand new mode of management. The administration of problem and paradox it is contended, the essence of management this present day. Paradoxical forces supply a dynamism which, even if frequently skilled as most likely threatening, discomforting and detrimental is usually fascinating, promising and positive.
''The assumption that corporations are rational entities is challenged each day within the paintings setting through a wealthy truth of asymmetries among conflicting forces, complexity, hidden intentions and paradoxes. somebody eager to comprehend the genuine forces that govern businesses should still learn this ebook. A needs to learn for contemporary leaders who've the highbrow honesty to steer organizations with open eyes and never with the over simplifications and clichés of the past''--Giovanni Ghisetti, Director company Transformation, Coca Cola agencies Europe
''Storey and Salaman’s description of the paradoxes which characterise management at the present time is hauntingly actual. Their clever optimism that these dilemmas should be met is as encouraging because it is tough for these people who've to do exactly that. Having learn the insights during this ebook I now know the way their company recommendation used to be constantly so pertinent''.--Andy road, handling Director of John Lewis
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Extra info for Managerial Dilemmas: Exploiting paradox for strategic leadership
Sample text
However, in practice there is some considerable overlap in managers’ experience of dilemma and paradox because both constructs are conceptual and interpretative rather than objective and categorical. We see the interplay between dilemma and paradox as a fluid and dynamic one. These may not be absolute categories but rather ways of seeing. The initial experience of discomfort and tension may be very similar. It is the mode of resolution which differs. The exploitation of paradox The power of paradoxical thinking – and we see it as a capability which can be learned, fostered and developed – is that it promotes and utilizes creative thinking which transcends old familiar ways of thinking.
And this is the main focus of the book. We argue that leaders and managers may adopt a range of approaches to organizational paradox. ) the manager ‘solves’ these problems by further tightening and increasing control). Using a second approach, managers faced with paradox may seek to ‘solve’ it by avoiding it. For example, one attempt to resolve the problems inherent in the management of people and resources might be sought through outsourcing. In this way other organizations handle the problems and paradoxes of management.
Management response is characterized by tendencies which encourage polarized, black/white; good/bad thinking. We argue that this tendency is not accidental or incidental but an outcome of a central management dilemma: how to generate managers’ commitment to a recommended option (by stressing – indeed over-stressing – the benefits at the cost of the rejected option). However, the appeal of this mode of thinking may have other foundations. It may be a product of a distinctively Western form of rationality applied to organizational issues, of the need for consistency, clarity and neatness.