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Organizations are dynamic processes through which meaning is simultaneously constructed and destroyed. Organizations may be conceived of as continua along which meaning varies according to its degree of coincidence. On the one hand, organizations are stable because coincident concepts, relationships, and values are developed through socialization. These coincident meanings eventually become crystallized as informal and formal structures and are sustained if powerful organizational leaders can suppress the expression of competing interpretations. On the other hand, organizations are precarious because coincident meanings are also regularly destroyed through action-taking. Destruction of meaning has its origin in fundamental contradictions, which, if raised, create the potential for individual and organizational transformation.

This article reports the conclusions from a study of crossfunctional product development teams with emphasis on the implications for altering organizational structure to accommodate team process. A comparative study of teams in four U.S.firms, using anthropological and sociolinguistic methods, found that team work is inherently paradoxical. It poses numerous contradictions and paradoxes for individuals, teams, and organizations. At one of the research sites, tacit recognition of this reality and a conviction that teams were critical to product development led to a continuous accommodation of the organization to the requirements of team work and to impressive organizational outcomes. Conceptual and managerial lessons are drawn from this successful case and are offered here to help guide both future research and the actual implementation of team work in firms.

This research explores the basic question: Are there shared cognitive structures (scripts) underlying common organizational events'? Linguistics and social cognition were used to fashion a framework for the interpretation and analysis of videotaped appraisal interviews, which were coded via speech act analysis and then computer-mapped to create a graphic display of each appraisal interaction. Interpretive analyses of these maps revealed a common behavioural script, which implied the existence of a consensual cognitive script for enacting the appraisal interviews. Additionally, the approach and findings of this study, which is based on an 'interpretive' research paradigm, are contrasted with a companion study (Gioia and Sims 1986), which was based on a 'positivist' paradigm. The comparison of two studies investigating the same set of events from alternative paradigmatic perspectives reveals not only convergent and divergent findings, but also suggests that when one adopts different 'lenses' with which to view ostensibly the same organizational phenomena, one simply 'sees' different things.