scholarly journals Becoming Salient: The TMT Leader’s Role in Shaping the Interpretive Context of Paradoxical Tensions

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 403-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Knight ◽  
Sotirios Paroutis
Keyword(s):  
Equilibrium Model ◽  
Dynamic Equilibrium ◽  
Top Management Team ◽  
Management Team ◽  
Business Units ◽  
Dynamic Equilibrium Model ◽  
Embedded Case Study ◽  
Over Time

How do paradoxical tensions become salient in organizations over time? Ambidexterity and paradox studies have, thus far, primarily focused on how tensions inside organizations are managed after they have been rendered salient for actors. Using a longitudinal, embedded case study of four strategic business units within a media organization, we theorize the role of the top management team leader’s practices in enabling tensions to become salient for their respective lower-level managers when there are initial differences in how tensions are interpreted across levels. Our findings extend a dynamic equilibrium model of organizing by adding interpretive context as an enabling condition that shapes the emergence of salience through the provision of a constellation of cues that guide sensemaking. Informed by a practice-based perspective on paradox, we also contribute a conceptual model of leadership as practice, and outline the implications for ambidexterity studies.

Looking at Team Improvised Adaptation Through a Paradoxical Lens: The Role of Team Plasticity

2021 ◽  
pp. 002188632110374
Author(s):  
António C.M. Abrantes ◽  
Ana M. Passos ◽  
Miguel P. e Cunha ◽  
Sílvia A. da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Equilibrium Model ◽  
Dynamic Equilibrium ◽  
Sudden Change ◽  
Adaptation Process ◽  
Inductive Approach ◽  
Dynamic Equilibrium Model ◽  
Paradox Theory

When time is of the essence and teams face unexpected contextual changes, they must adapt quickly, sometimes even in real time, that is, they may have to improvise. This paper adopts an inductive approach to explore how teams decide to engage in improvised adaptation, and what happens during those processes for improvisation to be successful. The study analyzes improvisation from the perspective of paradox theory and identifies six paradoxical tensions driven by these contexts: deployment, development, temporal, procedural, structural, and behavioral tensions. We propose a dynamic equilibrium model of team improvised adaptation that leads to team plasticity. By properly managing the paradoxical tensions emerging from the convergence of design and execution, teams become more plastic and able to cope with sudden change. These findings contribute to adaptation and improvisation literatures by delving into the adaptation process under the temporal and material confluence of design and execution.

Modeling the Evaluation Process in a Public Controversy

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 651-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl-Emanuel Dionne ◽  
Chantale Mailhot ◽  
Ann Langley
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Evaluation Process ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Orders Of Worth ◽  
Major Increase ◽  
Over Time

Public controversies have attracted increasing attention in the organization studies literature. They emerge when critical issues are not defined and understood in the same way by different stakeholders, influencing the way they evaluate the worth of other actors, objects, and situations. In this paper, we show how the “orders of worth” perspective of Boltanski and Thévenot may throw light on the evolution of an evaluation process occurring during a public controversy. In particular, we study the Quebec student conflict of 2011 and 2012 that followed a proposed major increase in higher education tuition fees. We conducted an in-depth case study based on media coverage of the actions and discourses of the major actors to examine how objects and actions associated with a controversy are successively defined, redefined, and evaluated over time through a series of tests of worth. Our article contributes to the organizational literature on public controversies by drawing attention to the role of six types of evaluative moves in situations of controversy, and by offering an abductively developed model for understanding the evaluation process as it evolves over time. We suggest that actors, through these evaluative moves, may displace the object of a test, and therefore the foci for evaluation, through actions intended to bolster their positions.

The Evolving Role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO)

2015 ◽  
pp. 207-232
Author(s):  
Brian Davis ◽  
Joe McDonagh
Keyword(s):  
Top Management Team ◽  
Chief Information Officer ◽  
Management Team ◽  
Top Management ◽  
Technological Environment ◽  
Manager Role ◽  
Is Management ◽  
Management Literature ◽  
Line Manager

The new role of CIO was created in the early 1980s, a time when organizations had just begun to recognize the strategic importance of IS. Prior to that, the most senior role in IS had been that of the IS Manager, a functional or line manager role with only limited involvement with top management. This new role was expected to work within the top management team to “bridge the gap” between the IS department and top management, to ensure the ongoing successful exploitation of IS across the organization. Today, it has been suggested that the role of CIO has now evolved to cover the need to also “bridge the gap” between the organization itself and its external IS technological environment. The purpose of this chapter is to review the IS management literature relating to the CIO in order to gain a greater understanding of the evolution of this role.

scholarly journals The role of innovation narratives in accomplishing organizational ambidexterity

2020 ◽  
pp. 147612701989723 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mairi Maclean ◽  
Charles Harvey ◽  
Benjamin D Golant ◽  
John AA Sillince
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Top Management Team ◽  
Management Team ◽  
Top Management ◽  
Organizational Ambidexterity ◽  
Top Executives ◽  
Exploration Exploitation ◽  
Polyphonic Model

Persistent tensions arising from the exploration–exploitation paradox continuously threaten the accomplishment of organizational ambidexterity. Structural, contextual, and sequential solutions designed to alleviate these tensions dominate the ambidexterity literature. None of these adequately explains how top executives implement tension-alleviating managerial initiatives or how they respond in real time to tension-induced organizational perturbations. In this article, through analysis of top management team speeches at Procter & Gamble over a 15-year period, we show how the construction and communication of four innovation narratives—contextualizing, mutualizing, dramatizing, and focalizing—reduced tensions and enhanced organizational ambidexterity. We demonstrate the importance of top management team reflexivity in devising and communicating performative narratives, illustrate the polyphonic model of narrative strategizing, and present a cyclical model suggesting that the accomplishment of organizational ambidexterity is an ongoing dynamic process.

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