The Nature of organizational paradox: A view from quantum theory

Research on organizational paradox has been burgeoning over the last two decades. While there is a growing consensus on the definition of organizational paradox as contradictory yet interdependent demands that appear simultaneously and persist over time, there is ongoing debate on the nature of organizational paradox, in particular with regard to the latency, salience, and persistence of organizational paradox. In this paper, we develop a conceptual analogy to quantum theory to gain new insights into these three fundamental aspects of organizational paradox. We draw analogies to the quantum principles of superposition, measurement, and entanglement to gain a better understanding of the nature of paradox with regard to latency, salience, and persistence, respectively. We develop a framework that elicits that latency, salience, and persistence constitute a dynamic interplay and clarify the role of social construction, contextual factors, and organizational settings for conceptualizing the nature of organizational paradox.