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The challenge of dealing with paradoxes has become a central issue in management and organization studies. Present research literature is largely inclined to idealize paradoxical framing in thinking and theorizing. We critically explore the perils paradoxes present when generated by stretch goals whose ‘achievement’ is accomplished through impression management. Using the Volkswagen emissions scandal we show how paradoxical promises, embraced discursively but not substantively, created false transcendence rather than paradoxical mastery. We contribute to paradox theory by discussing how the illusion of paradox embrace can trigger dysfunctional behaviours. In practice, the paper cautions organizations and their members from being overconfident in their ability to embrace paradoxes successfully.

Organizational scholars have shown increasing interest in the ways in which managers enact and respond to competing demands and the tensions they prompt as constitutive elements of their organizations. There is now a proliferation of conceptualizations of such competing demands that can be somewhat confusing. We will enhance conceptual clarity by identifying seven constitutive empirical characteristics of competing demands: these consist of the existence of dyadic relations, contradiction, interrelatedness, complementarity, compatibility, simultaneity, and the existence of push-pull forces. We construct a comparative classification of competing demands using these characteristics as our distinguishing features. The result is a more nuanced understanding of how managers approach competing demands that can help scholars to minimize arbitrariness, interpret results, and compare contributions in the area in a much-needed step toward understanding and designing organizations.