دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی پارادوکس در تغییرات سازمانی: نقش حیاتی در نفوذپذیری رهبران - تیلور و فرانسیس 2018

ABSTRACT

In organizational change, both leaders and followers experience paradoxical tensions, to which they often react defensively. Therefore, a paradoxical lens is valuable to understand individuals’ change reactions. While there is a rich discussion in the literature about the importance of leaders’ sensemaking about and managing of paradoxes in organizational change, the follower perspective, and in particular the leaders’ influence on followers’ sensemaking about paradoxes have largely been neglected so far. To close this gap, a conceptual model is introduced that, based on uncertainty management theory, highlights the role of followers’ fairness evaluations with regard to paradoxical demands. Leaders’ sensegiving about paradoxes to followers, which is based on their own sensemaking processes and stimulates followers to engage in paradoxical sensemaking, is suggested as a crucial boundary condition for followers’ fairness evaluations and their subsequent reactions to paradoxical tensions. The model thus combines the paradox and sensemaking–sensegiving literatures with the fairness literature to understand followers’ reactions to paradoxical tensions in organizational change. In doing so, the model acknowledges the paradoxical nature of organizational change and offers a new and specific focus on how to influence individuals’ change reactions positively. Testable propositions suggest directions for future research.

Practical implications and conclusion

The developed model acknowledges the paradoxical nature of change and its relevance for individuals’ reactions in organizational change. For organizations, to raise the awareness for the paradoxical nature of change and to encourage their employees to accept and embrace paradoxical tensions might be crucial for organizations to successfully adapt and change continuously. The model highlights the important role of leaders’ sensemaking and sensegiving for followers’ sensemaking about paradox. In fact, the leaders’ role in organizational change is in itself paradoxical: they are expected to bring out change which comes with uncertainty (Rafferty & Griffin, 2006) and at the same time to manage and reduce uncertainty (van Knippenberg, 2012; van Knippenberg et al., 2000). Therefore, individuals who are expected to lead and drive change need to be selected for, prepared for, and supported in this role (see also Smith et al., 2012). Only if leaders and followers successfully make and give sense about paradoxical tensions in organizational change, they will excel in the tension between the old and the new that enables both change and continuity in ever-changing organizations.