Wendy K Smith
Biographic Data
| ID | 3610658 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wendy K Smith |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wendy K |
| FAMILY NAME | Smith |
| SIGNATURE | SMITH W K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Delaware |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Managing the Paradoxes of Place to Foster Regeneration
Organizations face and contribute to mounting social problems and environmental degradation. Regenerative organizations seek to reverse this damage, emphasizing how to help local places flourish. Drawing on a six-year inductive study of one such regenerative organization, we derive an empirically grounded model which argues that regeneration depends on effectively managing place-based tensions paradoxically. Shorefast built social enterprises aim…
Oxford Handbook of Organizational Paradox
Microfoundations of Organizational Paradox: The Problem Is How We Think about the Problem
Competing tensions and demands pervade our work lives. Accumulating research examines organizational and leadership approaches to leveraging these tensions. But what about individuals within firms? Although early paradox theory built upon micro-level insights from psychology and philosophy to understand the nature and management of varied competing demands, corresponding empirical studies are rare, offering scarce insights into why some individua…
New Ways of Seeing through Qualitative Research
International audience
The Paradoxical Mystery of the Missing Differences between Academics and Practitioners
Most discussions of academic–practitioner relationships highlight differences, especially with regard to their relative emphases on rigor or relevance. While not disagreeing with such differences, the authors show: 1) several ways academics and practitioners may be similar in their theorizing and practices; and 2) how these similarities have been almost entirely missed in prior scholarship. They suggest the importance of viewing academic–practiti…
Beyond Managerial Dilemmas
This chapter makes the case that institutional and paradox theorists should consider problems stretching beyond managerial concerns and corporate performance to focus attention on the paradoxes that characterize the most deep-rooted and contentious social issues facing societies and economies, suggesting a switch from organizational to institutional paradoxes. To illustrate, two vignettes are described—one focused on the legacy of the University …
“I Am … I Said”
In reviewing identity and identity work literature, two overarching themes emerge that highlight the theoretical potency of viewing individual identity through the lens of paradox. First, while paradox is variously implicit/explicit in extant work, four primary paradoxes of identity usefully emerge that conceptually map the tensional processes of identity work: (1) paradoxes of entity, (2) paradoxes of conformity, (3) paradoxes of temporality, an…
The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Paradox
Organisations are rife with paradoxes, evident in persistent and interwoven tensions for example between stability and change, flexibility and control, diversity and inclusion, long term and short term, social and financial, learning and performing. This handbook investigates paradoxes across various organisational phenomena and levels of analysis.
Paradox Research in Management Science: Looking Back to Move Forward
Paradox studies offer vital and timely insights into an array of organizational tensions. Yet this field stands at a critical juncture. Over the past 25 years, management scholars have drawn foundational insights from philosophy and psychology to apply a paradox lens to organizational phenomena. Yet extant studies selectively leverage ancient wisdom, adopting some key insights while abandoning others. Using a structured content analysis to review…
Paradox as a Metatheoretical Perspective: Sharpening the Focus and Widening the Scope
Organizations are rife with tensions—flexibility versus control, exploration versus exploitation, autocracy versus democracy, social versus financial, global versus local. Researchers have long responded using contingency theory, asking “Under what conditions should managers emphasize either A or B?” Yet increasingly studies apply a paradox perspective, shifting the question to “How can we engage both A and B simultaneously?” Despite accumulating…
Dynamic Decision Making: A Model of Senior Leaders Managing Strategic Paradoxes
Senior leaders increasingly embed paradoxes into their organization's strategy, but struggle to manage them effectively. To better understand how they do so, I compared in-depth qualitative data from six top management teams exploring and exploiting simultaneously. The results informed a model of dynamic decision making in which strategic paradoxes can be effectively engaged. The details of this dynamic decision-making model extend and complicate…
Multiple Institutional Logics in Organizations: Explaining Their Varied Nature and Implications
Multiple institutional logics present a theoretical puzzle. While scholars recognize their increasing prevalence within organizations, research offers conflicting perspectives on their implications, causing confusion and inhibiting deeper understanding. In response, we propose a framework that delineates types of logic multiplicity within organizations, and we link these types with different outcomes. Our framework categorizes organizations in te…
Toward a Theory of Paradox: A Dynamic Equilibrium Model of Organizing.
As organizational environments become more global, dynamic, and competitive, contradictory demands intensify. To understand and explain such tensions, academics and practitioners are increasingly adopting a paradox lens. We review the paradox literature, categorizing types and highlighting fundamental debates. We then present a dynamic equilibrium model of organizing, which depicts how cyclical responses to paradoxical tensions enable sustainabil…
Toward a Theory of Paradox: A Dynamic equilibrium Model of Organizing
As organizational environments become more global, dynamic, and competitive, contradictory demands intensify. To understand and explain such tensions, academics and practitioners are increasingly adopting a paradox lens. We review the paradox literature, categorizing types and highlighting fundamental debates. We then present a dynamic equilibrium model of organizing, which depicts how cyclical responses to paradoxical tensions enable sustainabil…
Managing Strategic Contradictions: A Top Management Model for Managing Innovation Streams
Sustained organizational performance depends on top management teams effectively exploring and exploiting. These strategic agendas are, however, associated with contradictory organizational architectures. Using the literature on paradox, contradictions, and conflict, we develop a model of managing strategic contradictions that is associated with paradoxical cognition—senior leaders and/or their teams (a) articulating a paradoxical frame, (b) diff…
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Managing Strategic Contradictions: A Top Management Model for Managing Innovation Streams
Sustained organizational performance depends on top management teams effectively exploring and exploiting. These strategic agendas are, however, associated with contradictory organizational architectures. Using the literature on paradox, contradictions, and conflict, we develop a model of managing strategic contradictions that is associated with paradoxical cognition—senior leaders and/or their teams (a) articulating a paradoxical frame, (b) diff…
Toward a Theory of Paradox: A Dynamic Equilibrium Model of Organizing.
As organizational environments become more global, dynamic, and competitive, contradictory demands intensify. To understand and explain such tensions, academics and practitioners are increasingly adopting a paradox lens. We review the paradox literature, categorizing types and highlighting fundamental debates. We then present a dynamic equilibrium model of organizing, which depicts how cyclical responses to paradoxical tensions enable sustainabil…
Toward a Theory of Paradox: A Dynamic equilibrium Model of Organizing
As organizational environments become more global, dynamic, and competitive, contradictory demands intensify. To understand and explain such tensions, academics and practitioners are increasingly adopting a paradox lens. We review the paradox literature, categorizing types and highlighting fundamental debates. We then present a dynamic equilibrium model of organizing, which depicts how cyclical responses to paradoxical tensions enable sustainabil…
Paradox as a Metatheoretical Perspective: Sharpening the Focus and Widening the Scope
Organizations are rife with tensions—flexibility versus control, exploration versus exploitation, autocracy versus democracy, social versus financial, global versus local. Researchers have long responded using contingency theory, asking “Under what conditions should managers emphasize either A or B?” Yet increasingly studies apply a paradox perspective, shifting the question to “How can we engage both A and B simultaneously?” Despite accumulating…
Dynamic Decision Making: A Model of Senior Leaders Managing Strategic Paradoxes
Senior leaders increasingly embed paradoxes into their organization's strategy, but struggle to manage them effectively. To better understand how they do so, I compared in-depth qualitative data from six top management teams exploring and exploiting simultaneously. The results informed a model of dynamic decision making in which strategic paradoxes can be effectively engaged. The details of this dynamic decision-making model extend and complicate…
Multiple Institutional Logics in Organizations: Explaining Their Varied Nature and Implications
Multiple institutional logics present a theoretical puzzle. While scholars recognize their increasing prevalence within organizations, research offers conflicting perspectives on their implications, causing confusion and inhibiting deeper understanding. In response, we propose a framework that delineates types of logic multiplicity within organizations, and we link these types with different outcomes. Our framework categorizes organizations in te…
Paradox Research in Management Science: Looking Back to Move Forward
Paradox studies offer vital and timely insights into an array of organizational tensions. Yet this field stands at a critical juncture. Over the past 25 years, management scholars have drawn foundational insights from philosophy and psychology to apply a paradox lens to organizational phenomena. Yet extant studies selectively leverage ancient wisdom, adopting some key insights while abandoning others. Using a structured content analysis to review…
The Paradoxical Mystery of the Missing Differences between Academics and Practitioners
Most discussions of academic–practitioner relationships highlight differences, especially with regard to their relative emphases on rigor or relevance. While not disagreeing with such differences, the authors show: 1) several ways academics and practitioners may be similar in their theorizing and practices; and 2) how these similarities have been almost entirely missed in prior scholarship. They suggest the importance of viewing academic–practiti…
Beyond Managerial Dilemmas
This chapter makes the case that institutional and paradox theorists should consider problems stretching beyond managerial concerns and corporate performance to focus attention on the paradoxes that characterize the most deep-rooted and contentious social issues facing societies and economies, suggesting a switch from organizational to institutional paradoxes. To illustrate, two vignettes are described—one focused on the legacy of the University …
“I Am … I Said”
In reviewing identity and identity work literature, two overarching themes emerge that highlight the theoretical potency of viewing individual identity through the lens of paradox. First, while paradox is variously implicit/explicit in extant work, four primary paradoxes of identity usefully emerge that conceptually map the tensional processes of identity work: (1) paradoxes of entity, (2) paradoxes of conformity, (3) paradoxes of temporality, an…
The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Paradox
Organisations are rife with paradoxes, evident in persistent and interwoven tensions for example between stability and change, flexibility and control, diversity and inclusion, long term and short term, social and financial, learning and performing. This handbook investigates paradoxes across various organisational phenomena and levels of analysis.
Microfoundations of Organizational Paradox: The Problem Is How We Think about the Problem
Competing tensions and demands pervade our work lives. Accumulating research examines organizational and leadership approaches to leveraging these tensions. But what about individuals within firms? Although early paradox theory built upon micro-level insights from psychology and philosophy to understand the nature and management of varied competing demands, corresponding empirical studies are rare, offering scarce insights into why some individua…
New Ways of Seeing through Qualitative Research
International audience
Oxford Handbook of Organizational Paradox
Managing the Paradoxes of Place to Foster Regeneration
Organizations face and contribute to mounting social problems and environmental degradation. Regenerative organizations seek to reverse this damage, emphasizing how to help local places flourish. Drawing on a six-year inductive study of one such regenerative organization, we derive an empirically grounded model which argues that regeneration depends on effectively managing place-based tensions paradoxically. Shorefast built social enterprises aim…
Management and Organizational Studies (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Social science (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Complex Systems and Decision Making (6 works) · Economics (6 works) · Innovation and Knowledge Management (6 works) · Political science (6 works)