Navigating Leadership Paradox: Engaging Paradoxical Thinking in Practice

One of the most significant management challenges in modern companies and organizations is dealing with unavoidable, complex paradoxes. Today’s world is multidimensional, multipolar, and multipurpose, and increasingly, classic management challenges such as leadership vs. management; exploitation vs. exploration, virtual vs. physical presence, economic sustainability vs. environmental sustainability, localization vs. globalization, etc. assume the characteristics of paradoxes rather than problems or dilemmas.

Leadership of paradox is not about making a decision once and for all or prioritizing tough trade-offs, but about navigating between opposing considerations. Navigating Leadership Paradox argues that academic knowledge pools can support leaders’ decision-making and sense-making in organizations and navigating paradoxes. The book outlines a practical pathway for management leaders and professionals for steering through paradox using 5 phases, 10 paradoxes, 15 tools, 20 cases, and 25 learning points. It delineates how to identify a paradox by assessing the nature of your challenge and discusses the appropriate courses of action individually as well in collaboration with other stakeholders. It also gives inspiration and advice for professional helpers assisting others in navigating paradox as part of organizational development or other educational purposes.

This book will be essential reading for practitioners and academicians in the fields of leadership paradox, complexity management, change management, leadership dilemmas and organizational paradox.

Rikke Kristine Nielsen, PhD is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication & Psychology at Aalborg University. Her main research areas are organizational and leadership paradox, global leadership as well as academia-practitioner co-creation. Nielsen is an active research disseminator, speaker, and consultant in private, public, and civil society organizations, as well as an engaged scholar co-producing research with managers and HR professionals in practice.

Frans Bévort, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School. His main research focusses on HRM, professions and management. A special research interest is the tensions between management as a professional discipline and other disciplines. His work is informed by institutional theory and symbolic interactionism.

Thomas Duus Henriksen, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Psychology at Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark. His main research interests are in the intersections between learning theory and technology, addressing areas like virtual human resource development, hybrid work forms, hybrid management, and learning games for organizational development, while using paradox theory and French philosophy to address the complexity of such processes.

Anne-Mette Hjalager is a professor at the Department for Entrepreneurship and Relationship Management at University of Southern Denmark. She works with innovation, entrepreneurial processes, and management – particularly, but not only, in the tourism sector.

Danielle Bjerre Lyndgaard holds a Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration (MSc(Econ.)) from Copenhagen Business School (CBS) and a Master of Management Development (MMD) also from CBS. Lyndgaard is Director at the Confederation of Danish Industry, Department of Global Talent & Mobility, where she is responsible for all aspects of (global) leadership and HR processes related to global talent and mobility.