Coping with paradoxical demands: the dual position of deans in French business schools
通过定性研究，揭示了法国商学院院长面临的五种主要矛盾张力及两种应对心态（悖论心态与困境心态），并指出院长在矛盾系统中成为具有混合特征的学术企业家。
Recent studies have highlighted the major challenges faced by managers in the higher education sector and shown the contradictory demands which foster paradoxical tensions. Previous works have also underlined some specific tensions and rigidities that business school deans regularly face in their role. Yet, few studies have empirically explored which paradoxical tensions deans face and how they cope with them. Our paper addresses this gap. Using a qualitative study, we explore the simultaneous and interrelated contradictions faced by deans in French business schools and address how they manage the tensions related to these conflictual and complicated situations. Our work reveals five main tensions that deans have to face and two individual categories of responses to these tensions. It underlines two types of cognitive mindsets (paradox mindset and dilemma mindset) adopted by deans to deal with paradoxical tensions and highlights how deans have become academic entrepreneurs with hybrid profiles in a paradoxical system.