Paradoxes and management approaches of competing for work in creative professional service firms

Abstract

Despite their business relevance, creative professional service firms are under-researched, in particular with regard to how they compete for work. Competing for work is key to survival, but also extremely challenging due to the complexity of the services offered. In this paper we use a paradox framework to investigate the opposing demands creative professional service firms experience when competing for work. Based on a set of semi-structured interviews in the context of architectural competitions, we show that creative professional service firms face two interwoven paradoxes, which relate to the strategic intent (why to compete) and the design intent (what to propose) of client propositions. We describe these paradoxes as well as how organizations manage and cope with them through both synthesis and separation management approaches. Contributions of this study can be found in theorizing paradoxes of competing for work from the professional service provider's perspective, and in fostering firms' paradoxical mind-set, which facilitates the acceptance and resolution of complexity and different competing demands. KEYWORDS Paradox; management approaches; creative professional service firms; architecture; architectural competitions; strategic goals, design proposal © 2017 This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Link to formal publication Scandinavian Journal of Management (Elsevier): http://dx.

The role of space for a paradoxical way of thinking and doing: A study of idea work in architectural firms

“…And that is also the case when we have clients who want majestic buildings but do not have enough money. (Simon)Reflecting on the above, organization members relish it when they are permitted exploration and experimentation that would lead to unusual, challenging, or complex solutions (Manzoni & Volker, , p. 28). Being critically creative is all about reframing, where architects take a calculated risk, for reframing in the name of artistry can evoke political and technical challenges and can also be a reason for winning a competition.…”

“…First, regarding theoretical relevance, we chose to study architectural firms, because architects engage in idea work characterized by paradoxes. That is, engaging with paradoxes has been shown to facilitate creativity in the architecture context (Manzoni & Volker, ), emphasizing architecture as a creative endeavor (Brown, Kornberger, Clegg, & Carter, ) which includes a high degree of aesthetic sensibility and skills (Cohen, Wilkinson, Arnold, & Finn, ). Hence, architectural firms are deemed a suitable empirical setting to understand how space affects idea work.…”

Understanding the Process of Creation: A New Approach

“…As this demand grows, so does the need to control and manage creativity. This need is particularly acute in the economic sphere where creativity is rapidly becoming one of the principal commodities (Manzoni and Volker, 2017). The commodification of creativity has attracted attention of many researchers as is evidenced by an extensive body of literature that brings into focus the issue of control and management of creative processes (Machlup, 1980;Nonaka, 1994 (Piffer, 2012), despite this interest and the growing urgency of the issue of management and control, our capacity to foster, assess, and measure creativity, which is essential if creativity is to become our major commodity, remains very limited.…”

“…They focus on the difficulties creative companies experience when they compete with each other for customers. Manzoni and Volker find the entire competition procedure beset by paradoxes and complexities that can only be managed and negotiated, not resolved (Manzoni and Volker, 2017). These are just some of the examples of the difficulties that practitioners of creativity research experience in developing applications for creativity research.…”

The paradoxical mind and body : physiological and neurological responses to organizational paradoxes

“…Creative production is critical to the success of firms in an assortment of industries, including fashion (e.g., Aspers & Godart, 2013;Godart et al, 2015;Khaire & Hall, 2016), film (e.g., Kim & Jensen, 2014), haute cuisine (e.g., Koch, Wenzel, Senf, & Maibier, 2017;Stierand, Dörfler, & MacBryde, 2014), art (e.g., Ertug, Yogev, Lee, & Hedström, 2016), games (e.g., Tschang, 2007), music (e.g., Lorenzen & Frederiksen, 2005), design (e.g., Ravasi & Stigliani, 2012), architecture (e.g., Jones, Maoret, Massa, & Svejenova, 2012;Jones & Massa, 2013;Manzoni & Volker, 2017) and others. In fact, some scholars even argue that technology companies are, in essence, creative production companies, as creativity is critical to their success (Eisenman, 2013).…”