Paradox is gaining more and more pervasiveness in and around organizations, thus increasing the need for an approach to management that allows both researchers and practitioners to address these paradoxes. We attempt to contribute to this project by suggesting a relational approach to paradoxes. To this aim, we first present the state of the art of research on management paradoxes and then explain four regularities surfaced in the literature on this topic. We conclude by arguing that taking these regularities as a whole allows us to suggest a new perspective on paradoxes - one with a positive regard for the co-presence of opposites but that takes seriously the potential relationship between these.
In this paper, we draw on actor-network theory to reflexively investigate the role of the researcher and the research community in the production of a research subject. We review our earlier work, which explores how the dynamics of refugee systems help to produce the research subject-in this case, the refugee. We then use ideas from actor network theory (ANT) to move beyond the more conventional institutional and discursive analyses that are used in these articles. We include not just the activities of actors in the refugee system in our analysis, but also our own activities as researchers, as well as those of the broader research community. We use the concept of translation to explore the role of these actors in the processes of social construction that produce refugees as a subject of academic study, which is related to, but distinct from, the "social" subject produced in the social setting under study. Generalizing from our own research experience, we argue for a reconceptualization of reflexivity in organization and management theory, which moves beyond the common view of heroic individuals struggling to understand and manage their role in their research towards an understanding of reflexivity as involving the research community as a whole.
Go ov ve er rn nm me en nt ta al li it ty y M Ma at tt te er rs s: : D De es si ig gn ni in ng g a an n A Al ll li ia an nc ce e C Cu ul lt tu ur re e o of f I In nt te er r-O Or rg ga an ni iz za at ti io on na al l C Co ol ll la ab bo or ra at ti io on n f fo or r M Ma an na ag gi in ng g P Pr ro oj je ec ct ts s
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