Media Review: Organizational Paradoxes GaimMedhanieCleggStewart R.Pina e CunhaMiguelOrganizational Paradoxes: Theory & PracticeLondon: Sage Publications, 2024. 128 pp.
本书为管理研究者、实践者和学生介绍组织悖论视角，通过大量实例展示组织中竞争性张力（如探索与利用、竞争与合作），帮助读者理解并运用悖论思维。
This book is intended as an introduction to an organizational paradox lens for researchers, practitioners, and students in management and organizational studies.Specifically, the goal is to get readers to use a paradox perspective (Schad, Lewis, Raisch, & Smith, 2016;Smith & Lewis, 2011) as a way of seeing the competitive, if not contradictory, aspects of life in organizations today.It is my personal belief that teaching a paradox perspective can be difficult, especially for Western learners used to overly rationalist and dichotomous "either-or" thinking.However, Gaim et al. succeed admirably on imparting a paradox lens with a barrage of examples of paradoxical tensions on every page.Paradoxical tensions are, of course, the push-pull forces that compete with one another in organizations: exploitation-exploration, competition-cooperation, social-business missions, control-resistance, and many more.Drawn from extant research and journalistic reporting, the book's writing and organization make it very hard not to adopt a paradox lens with the steady build-up of tensions manifest in Eastern, Western, and African cultures alike.Chapter 1 sets the stage by making the case for paradox, defined generally as persistent and interwoven tensions.The authors then show us how to read and use the book when considering such topics as organizational strategy, change, design, and leadership.Chapter 2 delves more extensively into defining paradox and delineating it from dilemmas, dialectics, and trade-offs, arguing that understanding the framing of competing demands is essential to what is seen and not seen as relevant.In an interesting twist, the authors urge readers to visualize their problems with pictures of forked paths, balancing scales, walking a tightrope, a rubber band, juggling balls, yinyang, and a mule.A mule? Indeed, mules are a cross between a female horse and a male donkey-a model of hybridizing that leaders might want to deploy.This discussion builds to help readers understand how paradox functions at individual, group, organizational, interorganizational, and societal levels.As with most of the chapters, several text boxes delve into specific cases to illustrate the points that the chapter seeks to make.Chapter 2's focus on the Icarus Paradox, in which success breeds failure when complacency sets in, is one such example.Just ask Nokia, the putative "cell phone king" until 2007's Apple launch of the IPhone or Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX, who became a major player in cryptocurrency before a period of unstable financials brought the house 1390170O SS0010.