Humor in middle management: women negotiating the paradoxes of organizational life

Women in middle management continue to face multiple paradoxes arising from their structural and gendered locations that add to the uncertainty of negotiating organizational life. Investigating the lived experiences of women middle managers can illuminate the constraints and paradoxes endemic to organizing, for such experiences foreground tensions at the intersection of structure, identity, agency, and power. Specifically, this contextual investigation of conversational humor explores links between organizational status, gender, and paradox. In so doing, it demonstrates how women can use humor to negotiate managerial identities and to navigate organizational life. This study uncovers nuanced and important communication tactics of middle management women. This study also reveals the value of investigating the complex convergence of humor, gender, and organizational communication theory.     

The Freak Election Bet and the Performance of the Democratic Paradox

The article examines the ritual meaning of the “freak” bet of the late nineteenth century, primarily as this took place in the city of Philadelphia. I propose that an election ritual can be thought of as an embodiment of the so-called “democratic paradox” put forward by Chantal Mouffe. The tension of the ritual lies in the question of whether it is able to satisfy competing demands on the modern polity and the citizens who compose it. I argue that the freak bet was an attempt to “think through,” or publicly communicate, some of the paradoxes of modern liberty. It did not succeed in providing a definitive answer, since, as I suggest at the end, it is in the nature of liberal democracy that such an answer will not be forthcoming.     

The Fifth Paradox: Library Management’s Toughest Challenge

Library leaders are trained, experienced, and focused on solving problems. However, an often hidden challenge for library leadership teams is managing paradoxes. This article aims to highlight the difference between solving problems and managing paradoxes and to identify five major paradoxes that libraries face today and will continue to face in the future. A balanced strategy to proactively manage these paradoxes is suggested by embracing the true purpose of your library: transforming and improving the health and well-being of your communities as well as repurposing your library staff to support this strategy.     

Leadership Reflections: Leadership Paradoxes

Leadership faces a number of paradoxes that can be challenging and confusing, particularly as individuals take on new leadership roles. Employees want leaders to be decisive but participatory in decision making, focused on big pictures but contribute to detailed discussions, and engage but not micromanage. It is confusing as mixed messages are given to leaders and the opinions of employees vary, creating a situation in which it is difficult for leaders to fully understand employee expectations. Leaders not only need to understand these paradoxes but develop methods to balance employee expectations and communication strategies that help employees appreciate the balancing act that each leader must develop.     

Paradoxes of Strategic Renewal in Traditional Print-Oriented Media Firms

This article continues and extends the emerging scholarship of strategic media management by examining the day-to-day challenges that media managers face when managing strategic renewal in traditional print-oriented media firms. The aim, in particular, is to shed light on the tensions and paradoxical situations that middle managers need to deal with in contexts where taken-for-granted industry recipes and well-established business practices have become problematized as a result of industry-wide technological and cultural change. Based on an empirical case study, the article identifies and elaborates on three interconnected paradoxes, rooted in the history of the company and past decisions of its top-management: (1) balancing employees’ needs for stability with organizational needs for change; (2) bridging employees’ needs for security and tradition and the organizational need for learning and taking risks; as well as (3) reconciling employees’ needs to “focus on themselves” with organizational needs to collaborate for collective success. Theoretically, the article contributes to the literature by working toward a new paradox perspective on managing strategic renewal in media organizations. This theoretical perspective is offered as an interpretive framework for empirically exploring and critically examining the dynamics and complexities of strategic media management in the continuously changing business environments of the industry.     

Designing boundary resources in digital government platforms for collaborative service innovation

On the path to creating digital platforms, governments are opening organizational boundaries to cultivate cross-agency collaboration in public service innovation. This collaborative innovation takes place in the context of paradoxical tensions between openness and closeness, stability and flexibility, and generativity and control. The concept of boundary resources provides an instrument to balance these platform design paradoxes. Yet, little is known about designing boundary resources in digital government platforms. We contextualize the concept of boundary resources in digital government platforms to develop design theories. These design theories guide an action design research, where a national tax service platform was redesigned to enable cross-agency collaboration for service innovation. Design knowledge was thus generated into three design principles for the design of boundary resources in government platforms. These principles help in making design decisions by which government platform owners use different boundary resources to address the three paradoxes. We suggest that government platform owners cultivate collaborative platform ecosystems and define unified data standards to address the openness, design data modularity and interfaces for resourcing complementors, and use data relationships and accessibility as control points for securing the platform.     

The paradox of the right to information law in Africa

Growing adoption of the right to information in Africa should, in theory, improve access to government data, reduce corruption and expand the frontiers of democracy. Yet studies demonstrate that the right to information has contributed little if not nothing to improve the fledgling democracy in Africa. This paper investigates whether the implementation of the Right To Information law in Africa is a paradox? The paper contends that that corruption, human rights abuses, restrictive media, absence of media pluralism, denial of access to information, lack of transparency and accountability continue to undermine the very ideals of Right To Information Law. To resolve this paradox, the paper argues that the passage of the right to information is just one of the democratic tests to a country and will require far more than a passage to ensure its success. It argues that making information available will not prevent corruption if the conditions for publicity and accountability are weak. The paper contends that the RTI is dependent on a number of factors which may take long period to have an impact. Political leadership, civil society involvement and a balancing act that would address both access to government records and the protection of individual privacy are possibly the cure to this growing paradox.     

Winning Is(n't) Everything: The Paradox of Excellence and the Challenge of Organizational Epideictic

Encompassing both the controlled messages of values advocacy and less explicit rhetorical actions such as philanthropy, community programs, and volunteerism, organizational epideictic affirms common values. This essay argues that such common values are problematized by the presence of paradox even in seemingly innocuous epideictic subjects. Through a case study of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's “Stay in Bounds” program teaching children to be good sports both on and off the field, the essay demonstrates the challenges of organizational epideictic through the paradox of excellence. It also provides suggestions for the management—but not elimination—of paradox in organizational epideictic, particularly directed at external publics.     

Winning Is(n't) Everything: The Paradox of Excellence and the Challenge of Organizational Epideictic

Encompassing both the controlled messages of values advocacy and less explicit rhetorical actions such as philanthropy, community programs, and volunteerism, organizational epideictic affirms common values. This essay argues that such common values are problematized by the presence of paradox even in seemingly innocuous epideictic subjects. Through a case study of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's “Stay in Bounds” program teaching children to be good sports both on and off the field, the essay demonstrates the challenges of organizational epideictic through the paradox of excellence. It also provides suggestions for the management—but not elimination—of paradox in organizational epideictic, particularly directed at external publics.     

图书馆管理中的悖论现象剖析

文章从矛盾论的视角,剖析当前图书馆管理中人员管理、资源管理、行政管理等三方面存在的悖论现象,以期引起研究者、管理者对图书馆悖论现象的重视,使得这些悖论化解在图书馆管理当中,使其成为图书馆发展的原动力。     

Transforming the organization,part 2 strategy: moving beyond operational effectiveness

Organizations readily use the tools of efficiency—downsizing, outsourcing, re-engineering, and others—but seldom give needed attention to strategy. Based on experience in the marketplace, the authors offer ideas about strategy meant to be usable given the constraints under which academic libraries exist. First, organizations require a vision, overall direction, or goals. With a goal in mind, leaders can consider meta-strategies, which is to say, strategies that give embryonic plans for moving toward a goal room to grow. Examples are “the presumption of goodwill” and skunk works. Strategy always leads to paradox because deploying resources to one end seems to close off other avenues. The ability of organizations to perform both sides of a paradox decides their success.     

Communication as Ventriloquism: A Grounded-in-Action Approach to the Study of Organizational Tensions

Tension-centered analyses are increasingly popular in organizational communication studies. Hence, how tensions emerge and are dealt with by organizational members in their work activities are key issues of debate in our field. The purpose of this article is to develop a ventriloqual approach for investigating how organizational tensions (whether expressed in the form of contradictions, dilemmas, paradoxes, or situational ironies) are communicatively constituted through the mobilization of figures that contradict or clash with each other. To demonstrate the theoretical and empirical value of this approach, we use it to analyze two fieldwork cases from a seven-year ethnographic study of Médecins sans Frontières, and thus show how tensions shape organizational members' realities by being felt and sensed in interactions.     

Testing the Connectivity Paradox: Linking Teleworkers' Communication Media Use to Social Presence,Stress from Interruptions,and Organizational Identification

Scholars emphasize the importance of rich communication media for the development of Teleworkers' organizational identification, but tests of these relationships have produced inconsistent results. The connectivity paradox helps explain these findings. The paradox suggests that Teleworkers' connectivity to others through communication media facilitates remote work by affording greater social presence, while also negating the benefits of telework by enabling stressful interruptions. These outcomes of connectivity may benefit and detract from identification. We propose a model linking the core features of the connectivity paradox to organizational identification. Teleworkers and office workers were surveyed, and a multigroup path analysis was utilized. Results indicate that connectivity increases stress from interruptions and indirectly diminishes Teleworkers' identification.     

"I'm Not a Feminist...I Only Defend Women as Human Beings": The Production,Representation, and Consumption of Feminism in a Telenovela

This study examines a successful Latin American media product - the Venezuelan telenovela El País de las Mujeres [The Country of Women] - and analyzes how feminism and feminists are represented in it. Through interviews with the head writer and actors, the study also explores the production of these portrayals. In addition, consumption of the serial's representation of feminism is analyzed through individual and group interviews with audience members. The study highlights the paradoxes involved in the production and consumption of a media text that simultaneously delivers a critique of Venezuelan patriarchy, an empowering message for women, and a sharp rejection of feminism.     

Evaluations of Supportive and Unsupportive Responses during Spousal Deployment

This study investigates helpful/unhelpful support, and reasons why responses from others are evaluated as helpful/unhelpful in terms of how they affect the ability to cope with deployment. Interviews were conducted with 26 military partners during deployment. The results offer a typology of (un)helpful responses and attributions of these responses. Furthermore, the results indicate that similar responses can be evaluated as both helpful and unhelpful, creating a support paradox. Three prominent dimensions affecting the variability in response evaluations, based in validation, understanding, and control, are discussed: in-group versus out-group, identity-confirming versus identity-disconfirming, and burden-reducing versus burden-inducing. These dimensions deepen our understanding of how support is unique within the context of deployment, specifically in terms of the paradox it can create.     

Dialectic, contradiction, or double bind? Analyzing and theorizing employee reactions to organizational tension

Drawing from qualitative data gathered at two correctional facilities, this paper empirically illustrates employee reactions to organizational contradictions in a total institution and advances a theoretical model positing that organizational tensions may be framed as complementary dialectics, simple contradictions, or pragmatic paradoxes—each accompanied by attendant organizational and personal ramifications. The analysis suggests that organizations can create structures in which employees are more likely to make sense of organizational contradictions in healthy ways and avoid the debilitating reactions associated with double binds. Specifically, through metacommunication about organizational tensions (for instance, manifest in role play enactment of contradictory occupational goals), employees are better able to understand the paradoxes that mark work life and make sense of them in emotionally healthy ways.     

有序与混乱——网络空间的矛盾与冲突

网络空间是现实空间的延伸，是对现实空间的虚拟，是现实空间的映射。网络空间与现实空间的差异是导致网络信息传播中矛盾与冲突的根本原因。其矛盾与冲突表现在八个方面：网络开放性与网络安全性；信息主权与信息霸权；信息超载与信息短缺；信息污染与信息有效性，信息共享与信息垄断；个人隐私与社会监督；信息利用与知识产权保护；信息自由主义与社会责任。     

Cultural Competence and Institutional Contradictions: The Hydropower Referendum

This study explores a corporate campaign to pass a referendum to enable the development of a hydropower plant in a small Swedish community. In the changing institutional context that grounds this case, the organization needed to develop communicative practices that embodied “cultural competence,” a set of processes identified as critical for the legitimacy and success of business organizations in the emerging global/intersectoral environment. Findings suggest that the MNC's communication strategy captured important components of cultural competence. However, institutional contradictions impeded enactment of the strategy and resulted in delegitimizing paradoxical communication. The results indicate that organizational awareness of institutional change and culturally competent strategy are insufficient without special attention to contradictions and resultant communicative paradoxes embodied within a particular institutional context. The importance of a reflective communication approach that engages contradictions and tensions in the surrounding micro–macro institutional contexts is underscored.     

Is There a Future for Journalism?

A functionalist perspective on the future of journalism would posit that because human society needs journalism, we will find ways to support this communications practice. Yet such a perspective, however consoling, assumes a teleology that is far from guaranteed. What will happen is far from easy to predict; nevertheless, this paper pinpoints several key issues that impact on the future of journalism. It also advances some general propositions and a broad periodisation around UNESCO’s historical role in relation to these issues. The analysis gives particular attention to political and economic matters, the safety of journalists and internet governance. Each of these dimensions entails existential threats to journalism, but some opportunities are also noted. Four paradoxes are also identified, with tensions that may lead to change in one direction or another.     

档案文化研究的悖论及其消解之道

档案文化问题是近年来我国档案学界研究的热点问题之一,而针对档案文化的社会推广与社会公众档案文化观念的养成是我国档案文化实践的重要内容。然而,当前我国档案学界的档案文化认知与社会层面文化认知存在着明显的冲突,这种冲突衍生出我国档案学界对档案文化问题研究的悖论。本文从分析我国档案文化问题现状入手,阐释了档案文化研究悖论的表现及其成因,并分析了消解档案文化认知冲突的途径。