Inter-Organizational Paradox Management: How national business systems affect responses to paradox along a global value chain

Abstract

This study discusses the relationship between inter-organizational paradox management, national business systems, and global value chains. Using case study evidence from a global value chain in the footwear industry (in Germany and China), we analyze how different businesses in the chain responded to the paradoxical tension arising from the competing demands to provide a living wage to workers and to uphold financial performance. Our findings highlight organizational responses to this paradox along the value chain, showing how these responses were shaped by the interplay of different types of pressures exerted by national business systems and the value chain itself. While these pressures were aligned in the German part of the chain, they were not aligned on the Chinese side. The study makes two contributions: (1) we develop a taxonomy outlining how the alignment of different types of pressures influences whether organizations choose either proactive or defensive paradox management; and (2) we argue that theorizing the impacts of cross-national distance on paradox management can be enhanced by adopting a multidimensional approach to institutional variety that extends beyond culture-based arguments.

Enabling Rapid Financial Response to Disasters: Knotting and Reknotting Multiple Paradoxes in Interorganizational Systems

“…Paradoxes are rife in network organizations (Ospina & Saz-Carranza, 2010), network projects (DeFillippi & Sydow, 2016), alliances (Das & Teng, 2000;De Rond & Bouchikhi, 2004), supply chain networks (Schrage & Rasche, 2021;Wilhelm & Sydow, 2018), partnerships (Nicholls & Huybrechts, 2016;Sharma & Bansal, 2017), and relational cooperation between competitors (Gnyawali, Madhavan, He, & Bengtsson, 2016;Jarzabkowski & Bednarek, 2018;Raza-Ullah, Bengtsson, & Kock, 2014). Yet, frameworks that explain how organizations work through paradox cannot automatically be assumed to apply at the interorganizational level (as argued by : Connelly et al, 2008;Cunha & Putnam, 2019;Schad & Bansal, 2018;Tracey & Creed, 2017).…”

“…Second, paradox multiplicity defines interorganizational efforts (Connelly et al, 2008;De Rond & Bouchikhi, 2004;DeFillippi & Sydow, 2016;Huxham & Vangen, 2000). For example, alongside market and social paradoxes (Nicholls & Huybrechts, 2016;Sharma & Bansal, 2017), tensions frequently identified within interorganizational systems range from competition versus cooperation (Jarzabkowski & Bednarek, 2018;Wilhelm & Sydow, 2018) to local versus global (Tracey & Creed, 2017) to different national business systems (Schrage & Rasche, 2021). These multiple co-existing paradoxes shape organizational engagement within an interorganizational system.…”

“…De Rond & Bouchikhi, 2004), or in supply chains (e.g. Schrage & Rasche, 2021) might result in different dynamics. As studies of paradox at the interorganizational level remain nascent, further studies of paradox knotting within varied types of interorganizational systems hold much promise to further the insights developed here.…”

Organizational Paradox

“…Research may explore the cross-level dimensions of the paradox mindset. The mindset may be an individual attribute (Sleesman, 2019), an interindividual process (Pradies et al, 2020), an organizational orientation (Takeuchi et al, 2008) or an inter-organizational mechanism, as in experiences with coopetition or supply chains (Schrage and Rasche, 2021). Pamphile's (2021) work on the interpersonal dynamics articulating philanthropy professionals suggests that these may coordinate their sense-making processes to navigate occupational challenges.…”

“…As a meta-theoretical perspective, paradox (compared with the contingency perspective) can be deployed as a primary or a secondary theoretical lens in MOS, helping to make sense of managing and organizing as an exercise of articulating contradictions at multiple levels of analyses. From a paradoxical perspective, paradoxes exist at the level of individuals, such as in sustainability-related identities (Kiefhaber et al, 2020) or creative individual approaches to work (Miron-Spektor et al, 2011b); in dyads, namely leadership duos (Raffaelli et al 2021); in teams (Silva et al, 2013); in the logics underpinning organization (Ashforth and Reingen, 2014) and in inter-organizational systems such as value chains (Brix-Asala et al, 2018;Schrage and Rasche, 2021). Paradox can be used to complement other approaches (e.g., contingency approach) of organization featuring the potential presence of synergy but also trade-off (Li, 2016).…”