UNIVERSITY OF VAASA 
SCHOOL OF TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATIONS 
INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Mourad Mechiche  
 
PARADOX IN BUSINESS  
Towards a practical utility for paradox in business organizations 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Thesis writing 
In 
Industrial Management 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
2018
1 
 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS                                                                                       Pages 
1. INTRODUCTION 5 
1.1. Background and context 5 
1.2. Purpose statement 8 
1.3. Research Questions 8 
1.4. Research design 9 
1.5. Significance of the topic 10 
1.6. Scope and delimitations 11 
1.7. Structure of this work 11 
2. THEORITICAL BACKGROUND 14 
2.1. Introduction 14 
2.2. Paradox and Paradoxical thinking prominence 15 
2.3. Introduction to paradox principles 17 
2.4. Navigating paradox in organizations 20 
2.4.1. Managers and leaders 20 
2.4.2. Paradox close sibling terms, dilemmas and dialectics 21 
2.5. The paradoxes of an organization 22 
2.6. Paradox management 27 
2.7. Introduction to brain plasticity 32 
2.8. Brain plasticity, behaviour and paradox 33 
2.8.1. Plasticity of the brain to respond to behaviour change 33 
2.8.2. Environment Stimuli 34 
2.9. Paradoxical side of brain plasticity 36 
2.10. Omnificence of paradox and paradoxical thinking 37 
3. METHODOLOGY AND DATA 39 
3.1. Introduction 39 
3.2. Data collection 40 
3.3. Data analysis and results 40 
4. CONCLUSION 49 
5. TOWARDS A PRACTICAL UTILITY FOR PARADOX 52 
5.1. Introduction 52 
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5.2. Basics of the practice utility 53 
5.3. Learning process from the utility 54 
5.3.1. Learning targets 54 
5.3.2. The learning process 55 
5.4. Main objective and criteria for success by using the utility 57 
5.5. Digitization of the model and its structure 59 
5.6. Summary of the utility 62 
6. GENERAL CONCLUSION 64 
6.1. Contributions 65 
6.2. Limitations and suggestions for future research 65 
7. REFERENCES 67 
8. APPENDIX 1 77 
 
 
 
 
  
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LIST OF FIGURES 
 
Figure 1. Key literature fields used for this paper. 7 
Figure 2. Overview of the research design process 10 
Figure 3. Structure of the thesis 13 
Figure 4. The paradox principles interactions with an organization’s tensions 
(Price Waterhouse LLP, 1996). 20 
Figure 5. Paradoxes and their inter-relations to an organization day to day 
practices. 26 
Figure 6. Percentage distribution of total responses on paradox awareness. 42 
Figure 7. Percentage distribution of total responses on paradox impact of 
organization success. 43 
Figure 8. Percentage distribution of total responses on paradoxical thinking 
skill mastery level. 44 
Figure 9. Average of total responses on the readiness to embrace and cope with 
paradox. 46 
Figure 10. Percentage distribution of total responses on the concept of 
practicing to get better at handling paradox. 47 
Figure 11. Average of total responses on the impact of practicing to handle 
paradox would affect an organization’s success. 48 
Figure 12. Average of total responses on the impact of practicing to handle 
paradox would affect an organization’s success. 49 
Figure 13. Learning process on the basis of continuous training using the 
proposed practice utility. 57 
Figure 14. Practice in relation to mastery level of paradox and time. 59 
 
  
4 
 
 
UNIVERSITY OF VAASA 
Faculty of Technology 
Author:                                                               Mourad Mechiche 
Topic of the master’s Thesis:                         Paradox and business: Towards a 
practical utility for paradox in 
business 
Supervisor:                                                         Jussi Kantola 
Degree:                                                                Master of Science in Economics and 
                                                                              Business Administration 
Major subject:                                                   Technology management 
Degree Programme:                                          Industrial management 
Year of Entering the University:                    2017 
Year of Completing the master’s Thesis:     2019                            Page: 80 
ABSTRACT: 
Paradox studies offered vital and timely insights in the process of replacing the 
either/or thinking to both/and thinking. Regardless of this achievement, the 
paradoxical complexity of the paradoxical tensions has much increased in 
organizations due to the fast pace of change in these organizations on one hand. 
On the other hand, methods, approaches, strategies and models to attend to both 
the poles of a paradoxical tension seem to have maintained a theory driven 
stream. I use brain plasticity literature to unpack the knowledge on brain ability 
to adapt to chosen behaviour and alter itself on different levels even its structure 
to satisfy it. I used behaviour literature to support and complement the literature 
of brain plasticity that requires a behavioural change to incite the plasticity. 
Building on this literature, I develop an approach that helps combine the paradox 
theory literature with practice in a form of a practice utility that resembles a 
business simulation game, in which organizations’ executives practice and move 
up in mastery levels of managing the tensions of a paradox. Mixed research 
methods were used for this study. The empirical data were collected from a 
survey of 48 middle and senior level business executives. 
The insights of the empirical findings suggest a fair knowledge on paradox in 
business organizations, a will for a behavioural change towards an approach to 
managing paradox by practice. A digitized business simulation platform was 
chosen as the best form to present a utility to organization’s executives. 
 
KEYWORDS 
Paradox, paradoxical thinking, managing paradox, practice utility, brain 
plasticity 
5 
 
 
1.  INTRODUCTION 
 
This section will provide a general understanding of the topic of this thesis and 
what its aim will be. Background and context of this thesis will be started and the 
problem area of the paradox tensions in business organizations will be discussed. 
Subsequently, the research problems will be defined. The significance of the topic 
of this thesis will be mentioned. The scope and limitations of this thesis, as well 
as the overview of the structure of this thesis will be provided. 
  
1.1.  Background and context 
 
The world of science is in a constant speeding quest towards demystify the 
secrets of the environment we live in; along the way, more and more terms are 
coined to keep up with this leap (Neuwirth, 2018). 
Paradox comes from Greek words “Para” which means beyond and “Doxos” 
which means belief (Kunz, 1998); it is a word that was inserted to the English 
language in 1616, in which it was defined as eccentric, likewise it was defined by 
John Bullokar an English Expositor as “An opinion maintained contrary to the 
commonly allowed opinion” (Martinich and Hoekstra, 2016:626) . During that 
period and onwards this word bewildered the common opinion and an eccentric 
quest to demystifying its uncertainties, chaos and ambiguities reached different 
fields of studies including business studies. 
Paradox due to its abstract understanding has been known for many definitions. 
To Schad (2016) paradox underlies the tensions between independent elements 
(Raisch et al., 2018). Webster’s dictionary defines paradox as “A statement or a 
proposition seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, and yet explicable as expressing a 
truth” (Fletcher and Olwyler, 1997). According to Lewis (2000) paradox denotes 
6 
 
 
“elements that seem logical in isolation, but inconsistent when juxtaposed” (Lewis, 
2000). Again, paradox to Sainsbury (1995) “… an apparently unacceptable conclusion 
derived by apparently acceptable reasoning from apparently acceptable premises. 
Appearances have to deceive, since the acceptable cannot lead by acceptable steps to the 
unacceptable. So, generally, we have a choice: either the conclusion is not really 
unacceptable, or else the starting point, or the reasoning, has some non-obvious flaw.” 
(Sainsbury, 1995), to For John Leslie Mackie (1917-1981) paradox is the complete 
argument. 
Paradox is an old concept and its roots go deep in the ancient teachings 
throughout the world and marked in literatures such as the Tao Te Ching and in 
Judeo-Christian bible (Smith and Lewis, 2011a). Nonetheless, it was thanks to 
Willard Quine (1908-2000) in his book The Ways of Paradox (1966) that is the first 
to propose an accepted systematization of paradoxes in which he classified 
paradoxes into three categories.  
Paradox is not a mere contradiction and the advantage of its nature is that it 
stimulates discussion (Hart, 2006). However, it is perceived differently by 
different authors. To Rescher (2001) it is a dissonance, to Roy Sorensen paradox 
is a form of riddle, to Gareth Matthews is a conflict that is trapped within a 
conceptual truth and for John Leslie Mackie (1917-1981) is a set of irregularities.  
Paradox is a multidisciplinary phenomenon that is perceived differently and 
appears to manifest in every activity an individual engages in and it is necessary 
to seek solutions to resolve and manage it. 
In the business world, research on paradox explores how organizations 
simultaneously cope with the competing demands of daily business. 
Nonetheless, the answers to given paradoxical tensions using paradoxical 
thinking are amplified by the quotient of the different perspectives in which they 
7 
 
 
are perceived, the future thus can be recognizable from far, yet it is not 
predictable until it actually happens. That is where the benchmark of the actual 
results and the foreseeability of the organizations’ managers come to conclusion 
(Holbrook, 2002). To reach higher managerial levels, the paradox approach 
dissolves the limitations set by the managers’ minds, culture, principles, 
environment and many other factors on how things are done or supposed to be 
done (i.e. handling the puzzling situations managers are faced with in their 
organizations, the questions they ask to solve an issue and the others that they 
do fail to ask, the need for managers to be in charge, yet find themselves losing 
control) all reflect a way of thinking a perspective and a need for solutions to 
regain consistency and balance. According to Quinn, what differentiates us from 
each other is the way we look at and perceive the world (Quinn, 1988), in other 
words, what differentiates the organizations’ executives is their way of thinking 
that keeps them from thinking about detail problems, issues and/or paradoxes’ 
tensions in an ordinary manner and engages them in a thinking that excludes 
easy and simple answers.  
This paper leans on the following key literature fields in reaching the conclusions.  
 
Figure 1. Key literature fields used for this paper. 
 
Paradox
Brain 
plasticity
Behaviour
8 
 
 
1.2.  Purpose statement 
 
The aim of this paper is to review the existing paradox literature, in moreover 
approach the concept from the brain plasticity and behaviour perspectives to 
provide a contrasting understanding for the idea of facing the paradox in 
business organizations, in other words, developing a utility that would give us 
the possibility to engage these paradoxes, embrace them, cope with them and use 
them to our advantage. Sustain and support the self-development of 
organization’s senior executives in a sense that the more efforts invested in the 
development of an understanding to paradox, the more success organizations 
will achieve, and the more organizations succeed the more challenges arise, 
hence, more practice for executives is required. Propose a model for a learning 
process for a utility that would facilitate the process of shifting the paradoxes in 
business organizations from theory driven to a more practical approach.  
 
1.3.  Research Questions 
 
This work besides providing a practical understanding on the process of shifting 
the theory driven literature of paradox to a more practical utility, it will seek 
answers to the following questions 
1. What is the business view on paradox in organizations? 
a. How persistent is the paradox issue in organizations? 
b. What impact would paradox have on business success? 
2. What best possible practical approach that would facilitate the 
process of resolving the paradox tensions in organizations? 
a. Is there a need for a practical utility? 
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b. In what form this practice utility would be presented to 
provide optimal practice results?  
 
1.4.  Research design  
 
To investigate the paradox in business organizations and draw the conclusions, 
I conducted a review of the existing literature on paradox and I approached it 
through the perspectives of brain plasticity and behaviour literatures. I 
conducted a mixed method approach to first evaluate the knowledge quotient on 
the paradox existing in business organizations through the executives. Second to 
evaluate the readiness to change in management and/or leadership behaviour 
towards shifting the paradox theories, paradigms and/or models to a more 
practical approach to facilitate the process of embracing it, coping with it and 
setting it in the hearts of organizations. Third was to find the best possible form 
in which the utility that would contribute in shifting paradox from theory to 
practice should be presented. The following Fig. 2 gives an overview of the 
process of the research. 
10 
 
 
      
Figure 2. Overview of the research design process 
 
1.5.  Significance of the topic 
 
This thesis supports the process of grasping, embracing and coping with the 
haphazardness of paradoxes in business organizations. This work also 
contributes in faltering the ambiguity and the chaos of paradox tensions and 
helps in charting the course of action by senior executives to make the best out of 
the paradoxical tensions arising in their organizations. Sheds light on paradoxical 
thinking as an ability and a skill and increases the awareness on the need to 
switch the focus of managing paradox by means of applying the existing 
strategies, methods and approaches by means of a practical utility. Syllogize the 
literature to draw the conclusions on the latency of paradox in the human brain 
as well as the ability to think paradoxically and its best application in the practical 
•Review of
•Paradox literature
•Perspectives of brain plasticity literature on paradox
•Brain plasticity and its relationship to behaviour
Theoretical 
background
•Strategies to cope with paradox
•Paradox principles
•Paradox categories
•Paradox omnificience
Qualitative 
approach
•Evaluate the knowledge quotient on the paradoxes in 
organizations
•Evaluate the readiness to adopt the idea to train and 
practice towrds better understanding paradox
•Find the best possible form in which the practice 
utility can be presented
Quantitative 
approach: Survey 
•Analyzing the results, SurveyMonkey analytics and 
voyant-tools for text analysis 
Results analysis
Practice utility for 
paradox in business
Proposing a practice utility that will combine the paradox 
theory literature with practice
11 
 
 
utility. Thus, I expect from this thesis to stretch the known premises of business 
management practices and contribute in improving academic competence, 
develop employability skills of future business senior executives while 
improving the existing leaders and contribute in creating ambidextrous 
organizations by investing in their senior executives’ development and 
skilfulness in every business aspect.  
 
1.6.  Scope and delimitations  
 
This work’s first part will focus both on paradox as a concept and as an approach 
to management of apparent and probable to appear tensions that arise within 
organizations, as well as paradoxical thinking as a skill that requires 
development and training to make better use of it in the business world. 
The effect of brain anatomy on brain plasticity and any internal or external factors 
on human behaviour will not be considered, rather, only the impacts of 
behaviour and environmental stimuli on the brain plasticity are considered 
within the context of the willingness to adopt, embrace and find better 
understanding to cope and resolve the paradoxical tensions in business 
organizations. 
 
1.7.  Structure of this work 
 
This work will be drawn to follow the following structure: 
Part one: Introduction  
Here, is the introduction to the topic of the work supported by background and 
context, purpose, significance, scope and delimitations. 
12 
 
 
Part two: Theoretical background 
In this section I will discuss researches, studies and books that have been 
theorizing about paradox, paradoxical thinking and paradox tensions. 
I will discuss the development of studies on brain plasticity and behaviour and 
their pervasiveness and role in the evolution of the brain. The role of behaviour 
in inciting the plasticity and the impact of environmental stimuli on the brain and 
behaviour 
Part three: Methodology and data 
In this part I analyze and present the data. I draw conclusions based on this data 
in which I parry the unnecessary issues to the topic, hence, present the findings 
as insights to support the ideas introduced in literature and answer the research 
questions 
Part four: Practice utility 
In this section the focus is on the critical factors of the main idea of the practice 
utility which is meant to be integrated in the grandiose of business simulations 
in the near future assisted by a cling to paradox principles in business, delve into 
finding the optimal operation flow while keeping the paradox spur of the 
winning criteria and its main objectives active.  
Part five: General conclusion 
The final conclusions and recommendations will be drawn from the theory part’s 
conclusion which is an adjunct to complete the purpose of this thesis as well as 
from the practice utility which is complementary to quantify the level of success 
in a future implementation.  
13 
 
 
 
Figure 3. Structure of the thesis  
Introduction TheoreticalBackground 
Methodology 
& data
Utility 
Model
Conclusions and 
recommendation
14 
 
 
2.  THEORITICAL BACKGROUND 
 
2.1.  Introduction 
 
This part sheds the light on the main pillars of this paper, it describes the 
foundations on which the general conclusion is drawn upon and opens gates for 
future research. 
Paradox as a theory has been approached by many authors such as Charles 
Handy, Jerry Fletcher & Kelle Olwayler, Robert E. Quinn, Tushman and many 
others in a manner that is mainly theory driven. In other words, these authors 
presented their ideas on how to manage the paradox of business organizations 
by providing theoretical frameworks, paradigms, and theory driven models and 
strategies (i.e. Poole and Van de Ven (1989) describe four managerial responses 
to paradox: (1) acceptance; (2) spatial separation; (3) temporal separation; (4) 
synthesis). Cameron (1986) and Lewis (2000) concluded that paradox quarrels to 
meet divergent targets in a long-term sustainability and to do so, it requires a 
continuous effort that is a deciding factor for organizations’ success (Smith & 
Lewis, 2011). Robert Quinn (1988) also claimed that, in order to reach meta levels 
of thinking one shall surpass the current rational thinking that is based on reason 
and logic and think way beyond that (Quinn, 1988) where mastering to manage 
the paradoxical tensions is entirely dependent on having the ability for a holistic 
understanding of these paradoxical tensions. 
Paradox is very confusing, unclear and ambiguous, the things expected to behave 
in a certain manner, do not usually do and it asks organizations’ executives to 
live with those two or more opposing ideas simultaneously (Handy, 1995). On 
the other hand, organizations’ tensions intensity increases with the business 
requirements of today which means, more and more paradoxes appear in 
15 
 
 
organizations due to the increase in expectations and the need to satisfy an 
objective over another and/or a strategic goal over another (i.e. Nokia 
management one of the many choices to hold on to stability over a change (Doz 
and Wilson, 2018)).  
By the help of paradox and the will to center it as means to success in the hearts 
of organizations and choosing to invest in the quest to finding a possible 
approach to cope with its paradoxical tensions, manage them and eventually 
understand them and alter their existence to serve the business organization’s 
interest will result in the gaze of business management and leadership alike to be 
focused on management personnel development and turnover thus the results 
will manifest in business organizations leading the cutting-edge systems and in 
creating highly innovative strategies, hence, reach beyond the known business 
practices and limitations. 
 
2.2.  Paradox and Paradoxical thinking prominence  
   
Studies of paradox have focused on adopting alternative approaches to solving 
organizational tensions by exploring, surveying and investigating the possible 
simultaneous answers that might attend to these tensions in an organization 
(Smith and Lewis, 2011a) where the leader’s response to these tensions is the 
crucial factor that determines the organization’s future success (Quinn, 1988). 
More recent studies have identified clearer clues in the process of understanding 
the framework of operation of contradictions and polarities of paradox in 
organizations as such of Smith and Lewis (2011) and their dynamic equilibrium 
paradox model. The polarities of a paradox manifest equally from each side and 
considered both equally and fully present. For such reason paradox research 
aims at discovering how these polarities and tensions are connected to one 
16 
 
 
another and how they interact even though at first glance might seem to require 
a compromise and oftentimes posed as dilemmas to enforce the need for a choice.   
Organizations’ executives are at the first line to experience the intensity of the 
paradoxical tensions imposed by mostly their business field of activity, their first 
reaction the symptoms determines their organizations’ fate. 
According to F. Scott Fitzgerald “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to 
hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function” 
(Hayes, 2009). The existence of paradox thus has entailed the need to understand 
it, in its turn gave birth to paradox thinking or paradoxical thinking; to Fletcher 
and Olwyler (1997) paradoxical thinking is a process to be learnt to be able to 
generate unusual view points leading to a continuous change in perception when 
confronted with contradictory situations till being able to recognize the value of 
both the tensions confronted with and express their qualities to achieve a 
value(Fletcher and Olwyler, 1997), nonetheless, according to Dacher Keltner, it is 
the kind of thinking that identifies contradictions, opposites and dualities 
consciously, hence determines how the divergent span of these contradictions is 
interdependent to a future key purpose of an organization (Keltner, 2016). As a 
result, paradoxical thinking is a much-needed ability that is based on a different 
way of contemplation when attempting to solve paradoxical tensions, it is skill 
and mental dexterity that is sought not only in organization but in everyday life 
as well. Its principles according to Boaz Hameiri et al. are “Expressing amplified, 
exaggerated, or even absurd ideas that are congruent with the held conflict-supporting 
societal beliefs” (Hameiri et al., 2018). 
Consequently, one could conclude that paradox involves paradoxical thinking. 
Their prevalence is not only in organizations, it is in every life aspect (i.e. 
Paradoxical Thinking as a Conflict-Resolution Intervention by (Hameiri et al., 
17 
 
 
2018)), henceforth, to find a reason to peruse it, understand it and use it -knowing 
that paradox excludes at the same time any compromise and/or simple choices, 
which if other, will have a boomerang effect back on leaders on an individual 
level and on an organization on a corporate level (Schuijt, 2011) - requires 
organizations’ executives to construct three senses according to C. Handy:” a 
sense of continuity, a sense of connection and a sense of direction“ (Handy, 1995). 
Paradoxical thinking goes against the commonly accepted ways of viewing 
issues and fights the need to solve, control, manipulate and fix the issues in hand, 
rather room for development, learning and assimilation of the knowledge gained 
by interacting and exposing oneself to the paradoxical tensions allows a relatively 
better understanding of the value of both qualities of the tensions, nonetheless, 
to attain the this phase, the path is discomforting and challenging because as 
mentioned above paradoxical thinking seems illogical and contradictory to 
common sense, however, to sustain the high performance and achieve higher 
than the known success limits, it is necessary to encourage oneself to be 
paradoxical (Fletcher and Olwyler, 1997) and there is no better method to do so 
but to literally face paradoxical tensions and attempt to paradoxically think of a 
way that brings both tensions together to allow embryonic solutions to emerge.   
 
2.3.  Introduction to paradox principles  
 
If it is to bypass the barriers of the paradoxical tensions appearing in the day to 
day business practices, organizations of the future shall require knowledge and 
deftness to be able to fully take advantage of both the contradictions and 
polarities of arising issues and beget a clear view of the course to be taken to 
understand, achieve divergent goals simultaneously, thus, sprout balance along 
the process, for this matter, a call for paradox as a dynamic tool and paradoxical 
18 
 
 
thinking as an ability is required to not only sprout balance but also to hone the 
organization foci while shepherding health and performance (Keller and Price, 
2011) and contribute in ending the era of belier that hogged on business world. 
Price Waterhouse LLP has drawn five principles, that are not only to be used to 
manage paradoxes in an organization but also to be used as pillars to build future 
strategies of management of paradoxical tensions, moreover, it is necessary at the 
same time keep a zoom in/out mindset - a process of adopting a mindset that 
points towards the centre of the issues faced including at the same time the 
periphery that surrounds it- that will enforce the connections between the sub 
principles and the concept in which these principles were conceived 
simultaneously. 
On the other hand, in The Paradox Principles book, the author recapped the 
principles on which future attempts to dissolve the paradox tensions in 
organization. Nonetheless, many aspects of the books emanate from Charles 
Handy’ book The age of paradox and it was the base on which the author built 
these principles under the end-result pretext of attaining high-level performance 
through the balancing of conflicting demands (Goldstein, 1999). Moreover, the 
paradox principles are stated in a paradoxical manner that are not necessarily 
understood by organizations’ executives and do not satisfy both the perspectives 
of the complexity theory and the reversed effects theory. The oxymoronic nature 
of these principles have not been pursued thoroughly by the author for instance, 
empowerment requires firm leadership, the contradiction is clear by the spur of 
meaning of both firm leadership and empowerment; yet if I delve deep enough, 
I notice that empowerment is only one side of the coin because on the other side, 
subsidiarity manifests. The substitution of subsidiarity with empowerment 
might result in the same outcome, or it develops and achieves different meaning 
19 
 
 
that plunges organizations into different outcome. As a result, the zoom in/out 
mindset is required not only to take account of the obvious but to also surmise 
the hidden, the peripheral aspects and be able to foresee the different meanings 
and combinations in any theory to help adjust them to the organization’s needs.  
By the same token, these principles, their interplay and their relation to the 
organization still are mainly theoretical despite their complexity, the need thus 
to develop a utility that would provide the necessary practical framework on 
simulating how these principles could be applied in organization in different 
aspect of business without the high risks of directly trying to implement them in 
an organization is very much required. These principles and their interplay in 
organizations are depicted in the following figure. 
 
20 
 
 
 
Figure 4. The paradox principles interactions with an organization’s tensions (Price 
Waterhouse LLP, 1996). 
 
2.4.  Navigating paradox in organizations 
 
2.4.1.  Managers and leaders 
 
Leadership and management are two distinct concepts one from another, 
oftentimes, these two concepts are used interchangeably (Kumaran, 2012). 
Leadership and management are synonymous and overlap, many of leadership 
tasks fall within the boundaries of management. Moreover, leadership and 
Manage 
Complexity, 
Chaos and 
contradiction
Positive change 
requires stability
Focus on culture 
directly and 
indirectly
In order to build 
one must tear 
down
Focus on 
individual to 
build an 
entreprise
Empowerement 
requires firm 
leadership
21 
 
 
management share the same goal which is the success of the business (Nienaber, 
2010). 
Kotter (2001) believes that leadership is the growing point of management and 
adds that many senior executives fail to recognize or acknowledge because it is 
the force behind any significant change in organizations (Kotter, 2001). 
Nonetheless, academics still do not agree on what leadership is constituted of or 
which of its practices can be emulated. Altogether, leaders have to act as 
managers and managers have to act as leaders (Allio, 2012).  
In brief, the definitions of the agents of leadership and management according to 
Kouzes & Posner are as follows. A manager is the person in charge of putting 
things in perspective and keeping the organization and its goals on course, where 
the leader is the person in charge of drafting the organization’s future (Kouzes 
and Posner, 1995). Moreover, Maxwell’s to differentiate between a leader and a 
manager is to simply ask to create positive change in an organization, a leader is 
more likely to have an answer for that (Maxwell, 1998).  
In order to steer this thesis towards the positive change it is up to propose, a need 
to compromise between a leader and a manager is necessary and to bundle the 
different names the person in charge of achieving an organization’ success is 
important to exclude most of the misinterpretations and the misunderstandings 
of these agents and to use an umbrella term, leadership that would comprise the 
various aspects and connotations that might be involved when management or 
leadership evoked (Schuijt, 2011) throughout the rest of this work. 
 
2.4.2.  Paradox close sibling terms, dilemmas and dialectics 
 
22 
 
 
To get a better understanding of what could be paradox, it is necessary to 
differentiate it from its close sibling terms that oftentimes contribute in the 
digression of its meaning, which are dilemma and dialectic. 
Dilemmas are moral issues (Mayer, 2015; Schuijt, 2011), they are competing 
options that corroborate to cling to one choice over another; paradox tends to be 
posed as dilemmas to enforce the need to make a choice at the end (Mayer, 2015). 
The demise in taking paradox as a dilemma is that, it is a temporary solution for 
the problems or tensions undertaken, and eventually they will resurface, thus, 
the whole process needs to be repeated again since the core issues have not been 
handled. 
 Dialectics on the other hand, are those contradictory issues that could be 
resolved by adopting a dialectical methodology that consists of thesis vs 
antithesis that results in a synthesis (Smith and Lewis, 2011a). However, 
paradoxes are closely associated with the use of dialectical methodology (Kainz 
2008), yet differences that appear in orientation, assumptions, scope and in 
terminology make the two concepts disproportionate (Kuhn, 2012). Moreover, to 
Pinto (2001) dialectic’s ultimate goal is to mentally grasp a world that is 
tormented by paradox (Raisch et al., 2018) 
 
2.5.  The paradoxes of an organization 
 
Paradox in business organizations runs deep like roots, in every aspect of 
business manifest paradoxical tensions. The competing tensions and demands 
pervade the daily practices and permeate the choices of organizations (Miron-
Spektor et al., 2018). The paradoxes arising in organizations are numerous, 
nonetheless, some organization aspects are prone to produce paradoxical 
tensions than others (Brulhart et al., 2018). The paradoxes of strategy, the 
23 
 
 
paradoxes of organization and management and the paradoxes of leadership are 
the salient paradoxes in business organizations and have been recognized in 
literature as the main paradoxes that organizations are faced with. Moreover, 
often times, these paradoxes of different contexts and aspects of a business 
organization overlap which makes them hard to recognize (Guilmot and Ehnert, 
2015). Correspondingly, I will attempt in following to explain these categories of 
paradox and attempt to bundle them into one concept umbrella then highlight 
their interactions with a business organization.         
 Management and organizational paradoxes  
The paradoxes of learning, performing, belonging and organizing are the 
apparent paradoxes of an organizational and managerial dynamics of a business 
organization (Breckenridge, 2005; Brulhart et al., 2018; Chae and Bloodgood, 
2010; Gammelgaard and Maalouf, 2016; Jarzabkowski et al., 2013). The 
organizing paradox is often consists of an organization’s structural tensions 
arising from inherent polarities within organizational whole of organizations 
(Lewis, 2000). The performing paradox is the where middle managers confuse 
the roles of their responsibilities and play contradictory roles in order to maintain 
the organization performance (Lüscher and Lewis, 2008).  The learning paradox 
however, is the paradox of the tensions arising from using the past as base and 
reference while simultaneously having to disregard and move beyond it (Lewis, 
2000; Smith and Lewis, 2011b). The belonging paradox, this paradox is salient 
during business organization restructuring (Jarzabkowski et al., 2013) where 
tensions arise between values and beliefs (Lewis, 2000; Lüscher and Lewis, 2008).  
 Leadership paradoxes 
While paradoxes provide leaders better chances to learn about themselves, their 
employees, their customers and their organizations (Locander and Leuchauer, 
2006). The leadership paradox manifests when a leader is simultaneously 
24 
 
 
attending the tensions of the inertial forces on one side and the adaptive changes 
to an organization on the other (Garg, 2016). Nonetheless, it is not always about 
the leadership tensions arising when attending to organizations’ demands, the 
paradox manifests also in the leader’s style, approach or view on leadership that 
consequently overlap with many other paradoxes that fall under the context of 
leadership paradoxes (Farrell, 2018; Meyer and Meijers, 2017). The following are 
some examples of the paradoxes under the context of leadership paradox.   
• Right and wrong paradox 
• Distortion paradox 
• Perspective paradox 
• Authenticity paradox 
• Development and effectiveness paradox 
• Team and time paradox  
(Bolden et al., 2016) 
 Strategy paradoxes 
Michael Raynor argues in the book “The Strategy Paradox” that due to the 
numerous uncertainties and the number of unknowns of the business world 
future, the same business strategy that promises high returns simultaneously 
carries high risks of failure. Therefore, Raynor stresses that business executives 
need to set navigating the uncertainties and the unknowns to be the top priority 
while achieving results is a side quest (Kuah, 2009; Moyer, 2008). Opposing ideas 
usually lead to conflicts (Wakayama and LaPierre, 2017) and taking a strategic 
commitment requires the consideration of aligning the unknowns and 
uncertainties of the future. Nonetheless Bob De Wit argues that a discussion 
between parties of opposed perspectives however leads to a new understanding  
of both (Wit, 2017).  
25 
 
 
Companies’ leaders design strategies based on their perspective of how the 
future would be for their companies and vice-versa (Gray, 2013), strategic 
flexibility thus is the approach to manage the strategy paradox according to 
Michael Raynor (Gray, 2013; Kuah, 2009). Some examples of the paradoxical 
tensions that fall under strategy paradox are as follows. 
 
• Logic and creativity paradox 
• Deliberateness and emergence paradox 
• Resolution and evolution paradox 
• Market and resources paradox 
• Responsiveness and synergy paradox 
• Compliance and choice paradox 
• Control and choice paradox 
• Globalization and localization paradox 
• Profitability and responsibility paradox. 
(Wit and Meyer, 2010: 27-264)  
In order to prepare a base start of the paradoxes required to engage in the process 
of providing a practice utility I resort to the following figure that depicts the 
paradoxes and their inter-relations to an organization day to day practices. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
26 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Figure 5. Paradoxes and their inter-relations to an organization day to day practices. 
 
There to observe, the paradoxes that surround a business organization are 
numerous and if one scrutinises each, there will be endless discoveries of 
different paradoxes, dualities, dilemmas, dialectics, dichotomies and oxymora 
that run like roots deep in business organizations and to summarize, the zoom in 
mindset – a process of adopting a mindset that points towards the centre of the 
issues faced and excluding the periphery that surrounds it- alone in this case will 
create an endless fission process chains that might not necessarily be an 
advantage to the business purpose; since by doing so, organizations will be 
trapped in the limitations they set along the process and at the same time 
blinkered to the possible resolutions that may lie elsewhere. 
 
Management & 
organizational paradoxes 
Organisation 
27 
 
 
2.6.  Paradox management 
 
Organizations are found amidst a tempest of theories, strategies and 
management techniques also, known as techniques du jour, that seek to resolve 
paradoxical tensions. There is no right or wrong techniques, strategy or theory 
each one serves a purpose and each one is applied as perceived to set the sail of 
the organization to the favoured wind that leads to success, however these 
techniques and strategies have not contrived to somehow tap into the knowledge 
on the best way to resolve current and future paradoxical tensions which is one 
of the main setbacks, because the future is highly unpredictable and also have 
not helped but to confuse organizations’ grassroots, create chaos and contribute 
is spreading lethargy that leads to the loss of the organization’s winning edge 
(Raynor, 2007). Nonetheless, taking in consideration that paradox is confusing, 
ambiguous and equivocal, it demands from us to live and operate with two 
paradoxical opposites simultaneously (Handy, 1995), it is reeling and cannot be 
avoided in an organization’s day to day life. However, managing and organizing 
paradox is necessary, that is translated in the increasing number of books, 
scientific articles and researches either empirical or conceptual, where the 
number of approaches, responses, strategies and theories have multiplied each 
in their respective perspective; amongst them, Lenette Schuijt who has proposed 
four strategies to cope with paradox as a concept and they are as follows: 
 Acceptance strategy: it all starts within us, accept the existence of paradox 
alongside the day to day life in organizations, acknowledge the existence of 
dualities, polarities and learn to live alongside them. 
 Confrontation strategy: for a leader confronting the paradox is basically 
including both the opposing poles in the search for answers. Most of the time it 
is a very difficult task since it is directly connected to the leader as an individual, 
28 
 
 
where the personality, ambition, career, merit and other drivers might influence 
that leader to lean on one side of the answer rather than on both. Therefore, this 
strategy encourages a close examination of the unknown aspects, where 
consulting and having different opinions will broaden the scope of answers. 
 Transcendence strategy: while this strategy could be temporary, yet it 
consists of exceeding the paradox in hands to search for a framework where this 
paradox per se becomes not a paradox or dissolves due to its different context of 
interpretation. 
 Toying with paradox of strategy: a strategy requires good understanding 
of the previous ones, when one realizes that apparent contradictions conceal 
patterns, one can consciously use the paradoxical nature of things and can 
intervene in a completely contradictory approach. 
 (Schuijt, 2011) 
Many other authors have also attempted to set a framework of different 
approaches to cope and attend to paradox tensions in organizations and amongst 
them: opposition, spatial separation, temporal separation and synthesis, 
proposed by Poole & Van de Ven in 1989 (Guilmot and Ehnert, 2015). Others as 
Robert E. Quinn suggested that mastering the paradoxes lies in the ability to hold, 
test and experiment with the poles of the paradoxical contradictions or tensions 
and has emphasized that a need for a new way of thinking about our problems 
and our future is vital (Quinn, 1988).  
Perceptions of paradox have not shifted much from the paradox original 
definition “eccentric”, additionally, research on paradox has contributed much 
in facilitating the process of leaping from traditional either/or thinking frames 
towards to a more integrative both/and approaches (Schad et al., 2016). 
Nonetheless, paradox scholars seek to satisfy the  need to manage, cope and/or 
29 
 
 
resolve the paradoxical tensions of a paradox as if paradox has a solution 
(Sorensen, 2003), that led to them emphasizing types of paradoxes, collective 
approaches, and possible outcomes from applying the available theoretical 
models of resolving paradox tensions arising in organizations. The reflection of 
being able to solve the encountered paradoxes requires the need to be able to 
understand them and pay close attention to their dynamics and the relationships 
within paradoxes, however, due to the chaotic, uncertain and the ambiguous of 
their nature, the process of simplifying them using models approaches and of 
such has entailed complex realities that foster reductionism and incomplete 
theories by oversimplification (Schad et al., 2016). 
Taking a consideration to the Golman & Loewenstein (2018) that argued,” The 
desire for clarity is consistent with an underlying drive for simplicity and sense-making” 
and sustained the claim with “The aversion that people feel towards uncertainty is 
reflected in neural responses in the anterior cingulate cortex, the insula, and the 
amygdala. It manifests in physiological responses, as well” (Golman and Loewenstein, 
2018:148). Under these circumstances, it is apparent that shifting the process of 
theorizing in paradox research to developing a business environment that would 
give an opportunity for paradox trial and error theory.   
Fletcher and Olwyler claimed that, to take advantage of paradoxes one needs to 
change perception until he sees the values of both opposing sides and know how 
to translate those values into qualities that will contribute much in the process of 
reaching resolute approaches to resolve the paradoxical tensions (Fletcher and 
Olwyler, 1997). Therefore, what would be the first step to initiate the process of 
becoming able to see the world in a different perspective. 
30 
 
 
It starts with accepting that the knowledge acquired up to the moment is not 
enough, what I know at present is already considered past, hence the future lies 
in the unknown.  
Similarly, one needs to believe that emotional equanimity is of essence (Smith 
and Lewis, 2011b) because according to Huy, it is the cradle for paradoxical 
answers (Huy, 1999). Equally important to keep in mind that, the need to give 
rest to our sense-making when dealing with paradoxes is important, instead we 
should give way to paradoxical observation and encourage complex cognition 
(Handy, 1995) and look beyond those messy pictures of paradoxes by how and 
what these tensions would achieve if they were perceived and used 
simultaneously differently, which means that a need to teach oneself how to 
observe things in pairs, how to think about pairs and how to recognize pairs is 
an important factor and skill in an organization. 
Therefore, the two important pre-required skills that one needs to start training 
and developing in order to begin the journey to exercise resolving the business 
paradoxes, develop and nurture the required thinking and understanding that 
will contribute in reaching meta levels of business leadership are as follows. 
 Paradoxical cognition: In other words, the ability to recognize tensions. 
While contemplating as a leader on the organization’s issues the need to 
exercise a thinking process that supports the idea that issues in business 
organizations tend to have more than one side, rather, they are presented 
in polarities and shall be instinctively cognized when confronted with 
even in the easiest of problems. 
 Paradoxical observation: This skill is required when confronted with 
paradoxical polarities, there is a need to develop patterns based on the 
manner in which the issues, polarities or tensions have been handled, 
31 
 
 
what would have been solved using traditional thinking could be one half 
of an answer, the other half of this answer becomes apparent when 
juxtaposed with the opposite of the answer from the traditional thinking.   
These skills are to create an atmosphere in which a leader will not be satisfied 
with simple answers under the pretext that paradoxes are vague ambiguous and 
there is no time for them in an organization (Schuijt, 2011), rather, a leader will 
invest the efforts and the time necessary to explore every possible answer for a 
given issue and learn from these answers by developing patterns of resolution 
for future uses, hence, these contributions to organization’s efforts in handling 
the business paradoxes  
In the long run, organizations acquire insights and knowledge each time a 
paradox is resolved, managed or coped with, that gives passage to a higher level 
of understanding. The right strategy to manage paradoxes in organizations is yet 
to exist based on paradox literature; our focus is to be on unity and on 
developing, discovering and training our brain to become aware of the different 
possible approaches to handle paradoxical tensions that is confirmed by 
Christian Jarrett who emphasized that training the brain will make us smarter 
(Jarrett, 2014). To do so, Bryan Kolb stated that human brain continuously 
changes structure and functions to respond to environmental changes (Kolb, 
1995). In other words, if one train to observe, recognise and use paradoxes to 
one’s advantage instead of trying the understand them and the uncertainty, 
ambiguity or chaos that surround them, one becomes better at using them, then 
maybe one day become able to fully understand them and ultimately alter their 
existence to the advantage for business organizations. 
 
 
32 
 
 
2.7.  Introduction to brain plasticity  
 
Brain plasticity is defined as the brain’s ability to adapt to environmental changes 
such as pressures, experiences and challenges (Lövdén et al., 2010; Marzouk, 
2017), the interest in exploring this research field has grown widely thanks to the 
major advances in the process of understanding how the brain works and the 
life-long capabilities of the brain to change and rewire itself  to satisfy a 
simulation of learning and an experience (Costandi, 2016). The term per se was 
first coined by William James in 1890’s which was applied to behaviour in his 
book “The Principles of Psychology”, nonetheless, the term was used in different 
forms starting from 1780 (Costandi, 2016). With attention to the usage of the brain 
plasticity in this paper, the definition of plasticity is exploited within the premises 
that serve the purpose of concluding that the brain during adulthood phase still 
changes structure to meet environmental and behavioural changes of an 
individual.  
Years of research and experiments have left scientists confused about brain and 
its functions, it was until the 1960s that the scientist Paul Bach -Y- Rita provided 
evidence to the scientific community that the brain anatomy is actually not fixed 
and can restructure (Costandi, 2016). 
The brain is in constant adaptation to changing demands (Lövdén et al., 2010), 
this ability to alter itself to change, restructure and rewire in different forms  and 
on different levels to satisfy the requirements of an environmental and/or a 
behavioural change and retains the ability to be plastic throughout the life span 
supports the purpose of this thesis which is the fact of developing an 
environment that would help in shaping a behaviour to contribute in the process 
of seeking answers to the paradoxical tensions of business environment, also to 
33 
 
 
initiate plasticity of the brain to adapt to this behaviour and adjust itself to 
correlate with the requirements of the behaviour. 
According to Bryan Kolb “Indeed, there is little doubt that even thoughts can change 
the brain”(Kolb, 1995:5) which is a key point in the development of this research. 
Based on the conclusions of brain plasticity as the brain’s ability to change itself 
on various levels to satisfy an environmental and/or behavioural change and the 
quest of this research that is that the brain has the ability to foster, embrace and 
resolve the paradox of business organizations fall in the same scope. 
 
2.8.  Brain plasticity, behaviour and paradox 
 
In this part I delve into the literatures of behavioural neuroscience, the human 
behaviour and the paradox that is surrounding these concepts.  
The aim of reviewing this literature is to establish and support a relationship 
between brain plasticity and behaviour and highlight the correlation between the 
changes in the brain and the changes in a certain behaviour while taking in 
consideration their paradoxical sides. 
 
2.8.1.  Plasticity of the brain to respond to behaviour change 
 
The human behaviour according to Skinner (2012) is a changing, fluid and fading 
process of the responses of an individual to internal and/or external stimuli 
(Skinner, 2012) and oftentimes denoted by the question ”Why people do what they 
do?” (Manning and Curtis, 1988) in the respective scientific literature. Therefore, 
experiencing and learning are but legitimate to be qualified as behaviours.  
34 
 
 
The experiences an individual engages in, cause the brain to adapt to, 
restructures and rewires itself to be able to deliver optimum results for the new 
adopted behaviour (Kolb, 1995).   
On the other hand, not every behaviour is relevant to plastic changes in the brain, 
according to Kolb and Whishaw (1998) there are important sets of behavioural 
distinctions that are relevant to plastic changes in the brain and skill acquisition 
is one of them (Kolb and Whishaw, 1998a), again an individual that engages in 
an activity of learning a new skill, for instance this new skill maybe to learn how 
to play a musical instrument, the brain will also engage in restructuring and 
rewiring itself to satisfy this new adopted behaviour and if the individual 
continuously and repeatedly engages in this same behaviour, the brain 
ultimately alters its functions (Kolb and Whishaw, 1998b; Lövdén et al., 2010), the 
result is translated in an excel in playing this musical instrument. However, 
learning to play an instrument by simple observation is not possible, same as 
learning how to ride a bicycle by watching others do it. The practice is an 
important factor that contributes in the learning and skill acquisition process 
(Katz and Rubin, 1999; Reynolds et al., 2014) as well as in the plasticity of the 
brain (Kolb and Whishaw, 1998a). Applying thus the principle of engaging in a 
behaviour that consists of practicing to bring together the paradoxical tensions in 
business organization in the hope of initiating a plasticity in the brain that would 
contribute in introducing better approaches, perspectives, strategies or models 
help to handle the paradoxical tensions in the future.   
 
2.8.2.  Environment Stimuli   
 
As discussed above, changing our behaviour to acquire and learn a new skill 
provokes the brain to respond to these changes by initiating plasticity. The first 
35 
 
 
experiment Hebb conducted in 1947, in which the experimentation subjects were 
provided an enriched environment (stimulant environment) than the one they 
are used to, and the result was that the experiments subjects were found to have 
surpassed their performances in routine environments, taking in consideration 
that the experiment was conducted on rodents, monkeys and cats, it does not 
prevent to conclude that during human life span, the need for a change and be in 
a stimulant environment is one of the main pillars to learning and engaging in 
new experiences that ultimately contribute in shaping our behaviour (Kolb and 
Whishaw, 1998a); with this in mind, Lawrence F. katz (1999) confirmed that, in 
order for the brain to stay intact, exercising is a key element, where breaking the 
routine and maintaining a level of mental fitness is of great importance, he also 
believes that the brain calls for challenges and novelty to be able to flourish and 
perform and qualified this science to be “Neurobics” (Katz and Rubin, 1999); this 
author supports the theory of brain plasticity and based on it, he wrote the book 
about Neurobics in which he coined the term. 
In brief, developing an environment in which an individual uses a paradox lens 
and exercises the best possible approach, strategy or model that would help in 
bringing both paradoxical tensions together to achieve greater outcomes. 
The fact that a business organization’s leader submits to the idea that he/she 
could have the opportunity to exercise is the beginning of the process of 
behaviour change. The idea that there is a platform that reflects real life business 
events with a culture that dictates that an answer that doesn’t satisfy two or more 
paradoxical tensions is not admissible would force these leaders to break the 
routine, embrace novelty and invest in self-development and their organizations 
success alike.   
  
36 
 
 
2.9.  Paradoxical side of brain plasticity  
 
The study of brain plasticity has flourished in the 1980’s (Kapur, 2011). Kolb and 
Teskey have yet again confirmed that practically every experience is qualified to 
alter the brain even for at least a brief period of time. Nonetheless, these changes 
are per se paradoxical since à priori, the changes themselves cannot be foretold 
or predicted, hence, Kolb and Teskey highlighted concerning this matter that 
understanding paradoxes will contribute greatly in developing the 
understanding of the way in which the brain functions, taking in consideration 
that many of the changes that happen in the brain are qualified as paradoxical 
and inadequately understood by scientists (Kapur, 2011). The following example 
is used by Kolb and Teskey to clarify and point out the mysterious ways in which 
plasticity works. At a certain level of proficiency in playing a musical instrument 
such as a piano, the brain starts to consider the fingers of the player as one single 
finger, plasticity of the brain is the reason for this phenomenon according to Kolb 
and Teskey, yet the same authors also confirmed that in order for the player to 
recover and regain the fingers’ abilities to play the instrument, a stimulus for each 
finger is needed in order to incite the brain plasticity and make the player use 
his/her fingers again, as a result concluded by Kolb and Teskey, “Plasticity caused 
the syndrome and plasticity reverses it” (Kapur, 2011:359) 
Given these points, the emphasis is that paradox not only subsists but it manifests 
itself in every aspect of business and in life. The above fragment of the knowledge 
that could be acquired from a further study of the brain is colossal and for the 
most part altogether paradoxes co-exist alongside. Nonetheless, as can be seen, 
the plasticity of a brain doesn’t necessarily follow simple guidelines or rules. This 
latter does all that is required to satisfy the experiences undertaken and the 
behaviour adopted. For this reason, it is but legitimate to synthesize that 
37 
 
 
literature on brain plasticity and behaviour supports the practical approach this 
paper has undertaken to set the paradox as the beating heart in the business 
organizations of today, provide fresh perspectives on the current business 
practices and contribute in achieving superior results in the business world in the 
future.  
   
2.10.  Omnificence of paradox and paradoxical thinking 
 
There is nothing that compels organizations or their executives to adopt paradox 
and invest in becoming paradoxical thinkers. Paradox doesn’t provide easy 
alternatives and doesn’t allow simple or oversimplified answers it asks us to live 
with opposite tensions simultaneously, it confuses because things do not behave 
the way we expect them to (Handy, 1995). The search for the right strategy, right 
approach and right method have contributed in developing patterns which are 
recognised as right or as foundations or buoys to attend to the demands of the 
business world, the rest that is not conceived is just dysfunctional that needs to 
be supressed or eliminated as Charles Handy goes on to claim, “I used to think 
that paradoxes were the visible signs of an imperfect world” (Handy, 1995:12). 
Be that as it may, paradox is an inherent aspect of nature and its pervasion in 
business organizations is hard to miss, attempts to reduce one of its tensions by 
trivializing, adding or changing a thought or a behaviour means soliciting the 
either/or thinking to resolve the paradoxical tensions thus passing on 
opportunities that might enable creativity and innovation and sustain curiosity 
(Smith, 2014). Reaching full potential simply not going to be possible by simply 
tending to one side of the issues chosen or seen fit.  
The need for a different way of thinking is vital to be able to keep up with the 
fast-changing world of today (Handy, 1995) and be able to better predict the 
38 
 
 
future. Matina Horner, president of Radcliffe College from 1972 to 1989, pointed 
out that, “We can’t solve many of today’s problems by straight linear thinking, it takes 
a leap of faith to sense the connections that are not necessarily obvious” (Fletcher and 
Olwyler, 1997:154), that is to say that, paradoxical issues are not simply a matter 
of addition or subtraction. 
Paradox engages us in thinking on a different level apart from the classic level of 
thinking, it magnifies the quotient of answers and solutions that we are expected 
to provide, moreover, Quinn goes on to sum this latter up by “embryonic solutions 
emerge from individuals flirting with doubt and disorder” (Quinn, 1988:21), this lies 
down frontiers for managerial and organizational dogmas and opens doors to 
adopting a new multidimensional organizational culture where an answer that 
does not satisfy two divergent goals is considered just not enough and its 
unlimited powers of creation manifest in the number of solutions that could be 
perceived from the two paradoxical tensions simultaneously considered.  
As a result, considering all the above mentioned, organizations are more than 
compelled to adopt paradox and set it as their heart and invest in their senior 
executives’ turnover  that is the ability to think paradoxically, cognize the rising 
tensions and provides embryonic solutions to be able to achieve better work 
performances, better organizational health, holistic understanding, extensive 
knowledge, broader horizons and many other advantages that are yet to be 
discovered.  
  
39 
 
 
3.    METHODOLOGY AND DATA  
 
3.1.  Introduction  
 
In order to construct a more comprehensive understanding of the status of 
paradox in business organizations, demonstrate the ways by which it is 
perceived, and by which means it could be implemented to become an 
inseparable part of their daily practices. The positive view of the of business 
leaders on paradox is a one of the key factors that will guarantee the success of 
the search for an approach to embrace, cope and manage its paradoxical tensions 
in organizations, therefore, the need to look at an organization’s issues from 
different angles is necessary to take in consideration the visible side of the issue 
and its polarity which is the invisible side and get better understanding of both. 
This process will encourage learning on a different pace than used to, hence 
develop and nurture paradoxical thinking abilities that would become the 
strategy to handle, manage and cope with paradox of business organizations.  
The purpose of the empirical study was not to draw general conclusions on 
paradox in business organizations rather to gain deeper insights from 
quantifying the knowledge quotient on paradox amongst the business leaders of 
today, evaluate the readiness for a shift in behaviour towards the idea of 
practicing to get better at coping, managing and handling the paradoxical 
tensions that arise in organization, in like manner, get an understanding on how 
the proposed utility in this thesis best presented to support the learning process 
by practice for the business leaders, scholars, students and individuals with 
interest in the quest for demystifying paradox in business.   
  
 
40 
 
 
3.2.  Data collection  
 
The primary source of empirical data was a survey for the purpose of gathering 
information from respondents of company representatives from different 
departments, business leaders, business owners and third parties such as 
ResearchGate community and personal acquaintances in the field of leadership 
and business management. 
The answers received were in total were 48 and were gathered by means of the 
survey link. It was shared with ResearchGate community and with the personal 
acquaintances in the business field. 
The questions were characterized by open and closed end questions. The 
questions were clear and relatively short considering that they are meant to 
gather empirical data on paradox in business organizations, nonetheless, 
provided easiness and clear understanding of the point I wanted to pass through 
and the perspectives of answers desired as outcomes. The outcome was 
translated by an average time spent on the survey which was bit more than 10 
minutes with a 100% completion rate according to SurveyMonkey analytics.  The 
respondents were chosen based on their position, education level, their insights 
and their abilities to comprehend the idea of embracing, coping and managing 
paradox and the possibility of practicing to better handle it on the proposed 
platform in this thesis.  
 
3.3.  Data analysis and results 
 
This section looks at the answers received from the survey by analysing them 
using SurveyMonkey analytics (SurveyMonkey, 2019) for the empirical 
responses provided by the survey and a text analysis tool (Voyant-tools, 2019) 
for the open-end questions.  
41 
 
 
The analysis is conducted thematically according to the research questions that 
were to be answered by the survey namely: What best possible practical 
approach that would facilitate the process of resolving the paradox tensions in 
organizations that comprised the following sub questions. Why there is a need 
for a practical utility and in what form this practice utility would be best 
presented to provide optimal possible results. Conclusions are therefore drawn 
in reference to the literature review and presented in this section, taking in 
consideration that the survey conducted received 48 responses. The analysis shall 
start by examining the introduction part of the survey that covers the 
participants’ job positions. 
Using Voyant-tools a text analysis tool, the most frequent job functions held by 
the respondents with their respective frequencies based on the survey is as 
follows. CEO (8); manager (8); professor (7); owner (6); director (5). Which 
suggests that the survey purpose of aiming at getting responses from companies’ 
executives falls within the methodology scope of the thesis. 
The following question was to evaluate the knowledge quotient on the paradoxes 
existing in the business organizations of the respondents, the somewhat aware of 
the paradoxes that exist in the respondents business organizations has been the 
highest selected answer in term of percentages and topped the other options by 
having 39,58% (19 responses out of 48). Nonetheless, being extremely aware of 
the paradoxes in the respondents’ organizations received a 16,67% (8 responses 
out of 48) followed by a 35,42% (17 responses out of 48) of respondents that are 
very aware of the paradoxes existing in their organizations with just above 8% (4 
responses out of 48) where the respondents were not so aware of the paradoxes 
existing in their organizations. The results show a level of awareness of the 
paradoxes that exist in the respondents’ organizations thus a fair knowledge on 
paradox in general as the figure below shows. 
42 
 
 
 
Figure 6. Percentage distribution of total responses on paradox awareness. 
 
The next question was designed to again evaluate the knowledge quotient on 
paradox and the openness to exploiting it in business organizations by asking the 
respondents to provide responses concerning the impact of adopting paradox on 
the organization’s future success. Over 52% (25 responses out of 48) of the 
respondents agreed that embracing paradox and being able to cope with it is an 
important factor in the future business success, where 25% (12 responses out of 
48) of the respondents strongly agreed to the proposition. Over 18% (9 responses 
out 48) neither agree or disagree to the idea that paradox can achieve success in 
organizations and finally minority that is just over 4% (2 responses out of 48) 
completely disagree that paradox would achieve success in an organization as 
the figure below depicts. 
  
43 
 
 
  
Figure 7. Percentage distribution of total responses on paradox impact of organization 
success. 
 
The results of the responses received from this question add weight to the results 
of first question that provided evidence of an awareness of the paradoxes that 
exist in the respondents’ organizations thus a fair knowledge on paradox and on 
the paradox literature, moreover, it sustains and supports that paradox is an issue 
that needs to be addressed to be able to achieve greater success in organizations. 
Moreover, it answers the research question (1. b) of this thesis.   
The following question was aimed to explore paradoxical thinking as a skill and 
a process to solving the paradoxical tensions arising in organizations by self-
evaluation of the mastery level of each of the respondents. The responses to 
having an intermediate level to thinking in terms of opposites and polarities have 
topped the scale by just over 35% (17 responses out of 48), responses of being a 
beginner and an experienced level of mastery have scored both just over 20% (11 
44 
 
 
and 10 responses out of 48 respectively). Nonetheless, the number of responses 
on being a novice when it comes to the mastery of this skill and having an 
advanced level have received both low number of responses and got 12.5% and 
8.33% (6 and 4 responses out of 48) respectively as the following figure depicts. 
 
 
Figure 8. Percentage distribution of total responses on paradoxical thinking skill 
mastery level. 
 
This question was to complement the first asked ones that are about evaluating 
the knowledge quotient on the existence of paradox in organizations then the 
impact of paradox on organizations’ success. A leader once has knowledge on 
paradox and aware of the paradoxes in an organization, he or she develops skills 
that help in resolving the paradoxical tensions thus gain more insights and chart 
patterns on the different approaches used to solve, cope or manage a paradox, 
further, this question contributed in providing an overview on the paradoxical 
45 
 
 
skills level of mastery within the leaders of the business organizations and 
suggest that there is a need to focus more on improving and enhancing 
paradoxical thinking skills. 
The next question was an open-end question for respondents to have the freedom 
to express in their own words the kind of paradox(es) they have encountered and 
dealt with in their career and/or in their organization. This question was designed 
to contribute in identifying the kinds of paradox that are persistent in the 
respondents’ organization and to identify the categories of paradox that are most 
troublesome for the respondents. 41 out the 48 respondents gave a response to 
this question thus leadership paradox (i.e. Paradox of leadership rank and skills), 
management and organization paradox (i.e. Scale and singular or unique) and 
strategy paradox (i.e. Short-term performance versus long-term development) 
were identified as categories in which the respondents formulated their 
perception of what kind of paradox they have encountered or dealt with in their 
organization.  
The next question of the survey was designed to assess the readiness level to 
embrace and cope with paradox in organizations, 47 respondents out 48 gave 
responses and the average answer on a scale of 1 to 10 was 6 as the figure below 
depicts. 
46 
 
 
 
Figure 9. Average of total responses on the readiness to embrace and cope with paradox. 
 
This question also aimed at complementing the previous questions by identifying 
the readiness level to cope and embrace paradox and prepare them for the 
following question that is to propose the concept of practicing to better handle 
paradox. 
This question was designed to recap the previous questions’ aims and propose 
an approach to handle the paradox tensions arising in organizations by asking 
the respondents their opinion about the possibility of practicing to get better at 
handling paradox.  The respondents response “Yes, it could be” has topped the 
other given options by over 48% (22 respondents out of 48), moreover, the 
percentage of the response “Absolutely” to the practicing concept of paradox 
reached over 29% (14 respondents out 48) in favour of the possibility to practice 
getting better at handling paradox in the future as the following figure depicts. 
47 
 
 
 
Figure 10. Percentage distribution of total responses on the concept of practicing to get 
better at handling paradox. 
 
The results of this question answer and validate the research question (2. a) of 
this thesis and provides evidence that it is justifiable to conclude that practicing 
to handle paradox will make the practitioner better in embracing, managing and 
coping with paradox tensions in the future.  
The following question was designed to sustain and support the concept of 
practicing to manage, cope or simply handle the paradox tensions in 
organizations by asking respondents to rate the impact of this method on an 
organization’s success using on a scale of 1 to 10, the average of the responses 
was 7 taking in consideration the total responses was 46 out of 48 as the figure 
below shows. 
48 
 
 
 
Figure 11. Average of total responses on the impact of practicing to handle paradox 
would affect an organization’s success. 
 
The result of this question also supports and validates the answer to the research 
question (1. b) and complement the previous questions results. 
This last question of the survey was designed to provide an answer the research 
question (2. b) of this thesis by asking the respondents to choose the best form in 
which the proposed practice concept could be presented to deliver optimal 
results. 
The percentage of the responses favouring a digitized business simulation 
platform has topped the other options by 50% (24 respondents out of 48) where 
minor percentage of the respondents chose between the other given options as 
the following figure depicts.  
49 
 
 
 
Figure 12. Average of total responses on the impact of practicing to handle paradox 
would affect an organization’s success.  
 
The respondents were given an option to specify their choices if none is available 
in the options provided and among the answers received, some respondents 
chose table-top exercises, theoretical paradigm and transformational applications 
demonstrating connectivity, reading philosophy and Business simulation and 
online coaching. 
 
4.  Conclusion  
 
In this research both quantitative and qualitative survey design were used. The 
survey was introduced to collect from a predetermined sample of 48 
respondents. The survey questions were designed to be open and closed-end 
50 
 
 
questions. The sample characteristics included adults who occupy an executive 
position in an organization and/or being owners of the businesses. 
Based on the analysis of results received from the survey and the literature 
reviewed. Being able to embrace, cope and manage the paradox in organizations 
will have a great impact on their success in the fast-changing business world of 
today as validated by literature review and the survey results, hence reach 
beyond already existing knowledge requires to have the ability and the skills 
needed to make the leap between already known business practices, behavioural 
change and setting paradox as the beating heart of organizations.   
The need to develop a utility that will help combine the paradox theory with 
practice is necessary to help provide different options for organizations than the 
ones they already have and contribute in opting for this approach that consists 
of behavioural change towards it that is conform with the brain plasticity 
literature and with the concept of complementing theory with practice (Katz and 
Rubin, 1999). 
 
It was validated by brain plasticity and behaviour literature in this thesis that the 
moment a change in behaviour is decided and opted for in order to adopt a 
certain practice, the brain adjusts itself by altering its structure on different levels 
to ultimately alter its very own functions to satisfy the requirements of that 
behaviour consciously or unconsciously or both (Kolb and Whishaw, 1998b). 
Therefore, to be able to change a behaviour towards conceiving paradox, an 
individual is required to train himself or/and herself same as training oneself to 
learn to play a musical instrument, ride a bicycle or simply learn a new skill such 
as a foreign language, with time we get better at it and ultimately we start toying 
with it. However, in the case of paradox, if all the existing theory on paradox 
stays in theory premises, it will stay as theory and abstract no matter the 
51 
 
 
philosophical approach taken to explain it or help in resolving it same as riding 
a bicycle, one cannot simply learn by watching others do it. with paradox one 
needs to get hold of it by having a good knowledge about it and by practicing it, 
test it, make mistakes in resolving it and learn from the mistakes to improve in 
the future. 
One of the targets of this thesis consequently was to contribute in developing a 
brain stimulus model – a utility with an aim of inciting the brain and stimulate it 
with the paradoxical issues of business- in a form of a business simulation that 
would contribute in helping and teaching leaders and future leaders how to 
acquire the skill of becoming paradoxical thinkers and help in the process of 
practicing and training to resolve the paradoxes arising in the business world 
which is going to be the topic of the following part.   
 
  
52 
 
 
5.  Towards a Practical Utility for paradox 
 
5.1.  Introduction 
 
The literature review of paradox, brain plasticity and behaviour of this thesis  
gave way to thinking about the idea of a practice utility that is set to combine the 
theory of paradox with practice in order to awaken and develop the latent 
paradoxical thinking abilities and shape them into skills in a controlled 
environment such as a business simulation by constantly challenging oneself to 
think paradoxically  in terms of polarities and tensions with an aim of bringing 
the polarities together to formulate a holistic understanding of both and become 
able to make a decision concerning the future of a business organizations that 
satisfies at the same time both the opposites, in other words an answer that 
combines both the objectives of the opposites of a paradox while considering the 
environment in which they were evolved. The empirical data of this thesis has 
helped by providing deep insights on the paradox knowledge quotient amongst 
organization executives, provided valuable insights on the readiness of the senior 
executives to a behavioural change and helped in shaping the form in which the 
practice utility can be best presented to provide optimal results.  
Existent business simulations offer the practitioners a comfortable way to 
exercise developing and implementing strategies (Doyle and Brown, 2000), while 
learning along the process of trial and error monitored by supervisor, professors, 
mentors and/business consultants. However, in these conventional simulations 
platforms, beating competition and winning more profit are the main drivers all 
under the process of learning, whereas in this proposed model, challenging the 
self to accept and try to understand the paradoxes faced comes first then 
developing or formulating counter measures, strategies and responses will 
automatically fall in the grid of conventional business simulation formats. 
53 
 
 
5.2.  Basics of the practice utility 
 
The idea of this utility is drawn based on the principle of plasticity of the brain to 
adapt to an adopted behaviour. The behaviour that is to be adopted is to change 
the way the paradoxical tensions of a business organization are handled by 
seeking an answer that satisfies both the values of both the poles of the tension 
in hand, thus allow a culture that is driven by this behaviour to develop that 
consists of having an answer that doesn’t satisfy both values of the tensions is not 
enough. The success of this utility is based on concept of balance in the time of 
paradox that Charles handy has proposed in his book The age of paradox “The 
secret of balance in a time of paradox is to allow the past and the future to co-exist in the 
present” (Handy, 1995:63). In other words, in this utility allowing the past means 
going back to it. allowing the future means operating regardless of its 
uncertainties and invest efforts in foreseeing it. past and future co-exiting in the 
present is the utility model that brings together the business failure of the past 
and its alternative successful future together in one platform for a leader to make 
the best of both. The paradox theories, models, approaches or any of such shall 
be rendered into practice shape to be implemented in this utility i.e. Barry 
Johnson’s concept of multiple right answers of a paradoxical tension (Johnson, 
1992).    
The following general technical prerequisites are necessary in the build up of the 
proposed utility.  
 Gather the possible amount of encountered business paradoxes. 
 Render the existing models, approaches, strategies, models and so 
on into a practice model (Technical/mathematical equation or 
model) that could be implemented in utility platform. 
54 
 
 
 Choosing the top spectacular business failures for example Kodak, 
Xerox or Blackberry to be used as simulation examples.  
 Aim at a highly changing business environment by introducing 
artificial intelligence and other up to date technologies of such in 
the simulation. 
 A platform concept to contain the different variables that will 
recreate the real-life events of the chosen organization and be able 
to simulate its future results based on inputs from the utility. 
 
5.3.  Learning process from the utility 
 
5.3.1.  Learning targets  
 
By continuously training on the model a highly paradoxical cognition in 
identifying the different business paradoxes and their interrelations with an 
organization as well as a sense of observation that would contribute in 
recognizing patterns in business paradoxes and based on that, developing new 
different counter measures to face the given business paradox tensions will be 
developed. 
Giving individuals the chance to flourish and discover their abilities by 
confronting the existing business paradoxes and to lead the example companies 
to a path that could have saved their business and prevented the business failure. 
Individuals will have the freedom take the leadership position of one of the (used 
to be) most competitive companies in the world, thus competing against the 
former management made decisions that led the company to, so to say, its current 
state and then based on that, bring the company back to its purpose of existence 
course and keep on doing so while facing todays challenges.  
55 
 
 
Individuals shall be taught that analytical based decision-making is never 
enough to lead a company beyond already known business practices. Cognition, 
creativity and optimization are tools to be used in the process of grasping the 
understanding that everything has its paradox and the secret is in identifying it, 
that is to say paradoxical cognition, then practice thinking beyond those limits, 
while having two divergent targets in mind to satisfy, for the sake of the business 
ultimately. 
Encourage leaders to understand that not everything is fact based, thus learn to 
keep in mind that things are not usually what they seem to be, in turn that will 
develop their instincts, business acumen and wisdom for the future business 
decision making challenges. 
Increase self-development as well as team development, by improving skills on 
the both aspects. 
Encourage internationalization by setting international competition between 
schools, universities and institutions of such to take part in the different roles of 
an organization i.e. accounting institutions shall take part as accountants in the 
accounting department of the organization, marketing institutions shall 
participate as marketers in the marketing department or outsourced based on the 
organizations state and the leadership decisions and so on, every institution 
might take part in the process of building the company of choice again, promote 
internationalization and enhance knowledge sharing.  
 
5.3.2.  The learning process 
 
The learning process in this practice utility is based on the main steps of the 
learning model proposed in this thesis; the idea of this learning model was 
56 
 
 
adopted from the learning cycles of Kolb’s experiential learning cycle (Li and 
Armstrong, 2015) then revised to suit the purpose of this work, taking in 
consideration that the learning magnitude intended can only be achieved by 
following the steps proposed as they are proposed and focusing on only some 
steps of this learning cycle is futile. 
The learning and self-development starts by inciting oneself to experience change 
in behaviour, that is to say, to find the will to embrace paradoxes considering the 
pros and cons surrounding it. Next is the contemplation step which holds the 
cradle for developing paradoxical cognition skills while exploring different 
ways, methods and approaches to recognize the paradoxes encountered in each 
problem, issue or a decision to make. Following is the awareness step, at this 
point become able to recognize the paradoxes, observe them and learn their 
behaviour and interactions and ultimately recognise their patterns, later comes 
the step of conceptualization, in which an understanding of paradoxes is 
embryonic and the ideas formed about them are yet to bear fruit of success. The 
following step the results of the process of applying the previous steps altogether 
are shown, gathering the most salient tensions and developing a plan of action 
to proceed in leading the company to a better future. 
57 
 
 
 
Figure 13. Learning process on the basis of continuous training using the proposed 
practice utility. 
 
5.4.  Main objective and criteria for success by using the utility 
 
The main objective by using this utility is the quest to find the will to change the 
behaviour, accepting that paradoxes pervade in everything aspect of business in 
particular and in life in general and to recognize the need to develop the latent 
paradoxical thinking abilities by facing head to head the paradoxes of business. 
Nonetheless, as it was said,” two captains, one ship, no destination” (Okogba, 2017). 
The utility bears only one individual to lead the organization, have the 
opportunity to be in charge and lead is of utmost importance, either alone against 
the environment created by the simulator or by having a team of choice to lead 
against another that will give the simulation even a greater impact.  
Once one chooses to adopt and learn from this model, success in achieving results 
becomes the side outcome and ceases being the quest, winning or losing will lose 
Experience:
Change in behaviour 
Contemplate:
Paradoxical 
cognition 
Awareness:
Paradoxical 
observation
Conceptualize:
Recognize tensions
Results and 
Evaluation of 
achievements
 
58 
 
 
meaning. Competition becomes irrelevant and the real quest, that is purpose, 
reveals itself which includes both knowledge and self-exploration. Nevertheless, 
an individual shall become the judge of his own self based on the progress made, 
the difference in perception and the way of thinking, the difference in behaviour 
and the broader unrestricted view while succeed in looking at world as an 
abundant source of everything becomes the main winning criterion which will 
be repeated constantly during the training, at the same time, according to Colin 
Price’s empirical study of world’s super accelerators, in other words, companies 
with high performances that belong to the top quintile of the world’s most 
successful organizations, the nowadays super accelerator companies have 
tendency to be good in satisfying simultaneously two purposes out of the four 
proposed by the author as follows: 
 Understanding the customer needs i.e. winning by understanding 
customers’ needs for example: Apple, Tencent Holdings and Cigna. 
 Resource allocation to match given opportunities for example: The 
Priceline group, Danaher and Blackrock. 
 Execution i.e. winning by outcompeting competitors for example: 
Tata consulting service, Gilead sciences and Biogen. 
 Talent acquisition i.e. winning by excelling in managing talented 
workforce for example: Alphabet and Starbucks.  
(Price and Toye, 2017) 
It is equally important to emphasize that in the early stages of the training having 
one purpose in mind and achieving it as Price argued will ultimately lead an 
organization to the top fortune 500 of the world, however, according to the same 
author being able to satisfy two of the above mentioned purposes will lead the 
organization to belong to the top quantile of the fortune 500, that is to say that, 
59 
 
 
achieving one or two of these purposes could be taken as parallel winning criteria 
when training on the utility. 
The more time that would be spend trying to use both the polarities of a given 
paradox the better the practitioners becomes. Therefore, the progress of a 
practitioner in comparison to the time spent on training is depicted in the 
following figure where the levels that could be reached are not limited and 
entirely dependent on the practitioners activeness and deftness in the quest of 
conquering paradox in business organizations. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   Figure 14. Practice in relation to mastery level of paradox and time. 
 
5.5.  Digitization of the model and its structure  
 
Level 1 
Introduction 
& familiarization 
Level 2 
Able to identify 
paradox 
Level 3 
Find solutions 
based on both 
tensions 
Level 4 
Understand 
paradox 
Mastery 
level of 
paradox 
Time 
60 
 
 
The utility will be an online based platform. The online features shall comprise a 
real reconstruction of the three main companies mentioned in this thesis and 
bring them back to the time of being the world’s leaders in their respective 
markets and just about to take a turn to failure including for instance the sales 
and marketing strategies, the market share, the stock value and all other aspect 
of business of these organizations. The utility as well shall comprise online 
features such as real life and simulated hunt for talent acquisition to allow the 
leader to hire the team that suits his or her future plans for the company case 
undertaken, have access to competition news, market updates and build 
communication bridges with his/her team members if chosen to be from same or 
different institutions. Virtually, this utility creates combines the past business 
failures and up to date technologies to create an alternate virtual reality in which 
the companies chosen could have seen greatness and success where a parallel 
reality in which the end result is to always challenge oneself paradoxically, reach 
for meta level solutions and be ahead of the business world by reaching out for 
solutions that did not exist at that time. 
The exact structural pillars of the utility are yet to be developed in further 
research yet the general guidelines on what the final product will contain in 
different pages of the stimulus platform is as follows: 
 Home: in this page contains an executive summary of the purpose 
of this utility including guidelines on start and end of the training 
and most importantly, the challenges that the company is 
undertaking once the new leadership and probably a new team has 
taken control. 
  Commands: This page is considered to be the main page of the 
model since it comprises the paradoxical cognition and observation 
processes, the awareness of the tensions and the answer to those 
61 
 
 
divergent poles are to be made on this page as well as the general 
decision-making process concerning the organization with news 
feed on every aspect of its markets and updates on current day to 
day issues. 
 Conclusions: This page is a monitoring page it provides 
performance evaluation, activeness, business acumen evaluation 
and other results of such thus having the opportunity to work on 
the highlighted lacks from the results received taking in 
consideration that the company is simulated continuously based on 
the factors and variables of the business environment imposed by 
the simulation. 
 Environment: in this page the results of decisions depending on the 
cap of the company is simulated in long term and in short term 
readings, where the leader alone or with his or her team can notice 
hints of market changes, competition change or any changes of 
such hence have possibilities to adjust accordingly. 
 Rendition: in this page we find the performance results and the 
company status and position in the market plus forecasts in 
addition to individual performance of the leader and the team 
members compared to an existing simulation of what the business 
would become according to the business variables the AI included 
in the program creates. 
This proposed structure is up to changes; however, the result is not only to 
develop a new platform, but also to be able to adapt the principles of this model 
to the existing business simulation platforms. 
 
62 
 
 
5.6.  Summary of the utility 
 
To summarize the contents of this utility, all considered as shown in the above 
mentioned as not to digress, the trainee takes the role of a leader in the chosen 
multi-billion company and faced with business paradoxes of the time of the great 
success and just on the brink of the collapse of this company as well as with the 
paradoxes faced nowadays, hence his or her task in to find responses, methods 
or ways for the company to amplify those business paradoxes with responses 
that satisfy both the opposites given or faced during the process, while taking in 
consideration the impact of the four levels of thinking proposed by Price in his 
book “Accelerating performance” (Price and Toye, 2017). Thus, the learning 
outcomes from the training will result in the follows: 
 A self-challenging mindset with an aim of changing behaviour, 
thus, altering brain plasticity to our new adopted behaviour and 
clinging on “I need a satisfactory answer to both” motto. 
 Understanding how to impede the non-value-added decisions by 
developing new patterns in dealing with business paradoxes and 
finding answers that satisfies them. 
  Learn to relish uncertainty, ambiguity, chaos and non-
conventionalities in decision making. 
 Resent dogmas in all forms in the organization. 
The meritocracy system in this model is entirely derived from first, changing the 
behaviour and then in self-development of the leader and his team if chosen that 
will result in a change of perception, in other words, the sole merit to be gained 
as being a leader is to be able to see things in other perspectives and understand 
them in a different way than used to, be able to exercise and develop paradoxical 
thinking and observation skills, based on that, develop paradoxical patterns that 
63 
 
 
would contribute in boosting the current knowledge in order to have access to 
different levels and most importantly in order to pinpoint and tick the awareness 
box of the self-confinement that surround us and unequivocally achieve beyond 
expected results. 
  
   
  
64 
 
 
6.  GENERAL CONCLUSION 
 
What I have discovered is that paradox exists and pervades in every aspect of 
business and in every aspect of life altogether, as a matter of fact similarities in 
the literature about paradoxes that are the opposites of aspects of business that 
create chaos, ambiguity and uncertainty are abound, hence when these opposites 
are juxtaposed, coped with, resolved, navigated or any approach of such with the 
patterns long developed in business management and business leadership alike 
are apparent, one is able to hone solutions that are innovative, revolutionary and 
at the same time outlandish. However, the understanding of the purpose of the 
use of paradox differs from one source to another, and from one author to 
another. In this thesis the interpretation of paradox per se is relevant only if 
paradox is deployed with the help of the practice utility proposed in the future 
business organizations’ leadership, correspondingly, the development of the 
paradoxical thinking as latent skills will depend on the magnitude of this 
deployment.  
In order to provide grounds for this latency of paradoxical thinking abilities and 
justify the need for practice, a reach out for a different fields of study apart from 
business such as brain plasticity and behaviour helped much is clarifying the 
necessity of developing a practice utility. Brain plasticity is a science that studies 
the brain changes that are initiated by changes from different factors that I 
narrowed to only behavioural changes and environmental stimuli. 
Consequently, I syllogized that the paradoxical thinking abilities are latent same 
as every ability possessed or planned to acquire. 
To render and combine the theory of the literature of this thesis into a more 
pragmatic and practical approach, I have proposed the idea of developing a 
practice utility; this utility is not only sought for training purposes, it is sought as 
65 
 
 
well to provide support for learning and open doors for future business 
leadership, brain and behavioural changes researches.  
In this thesis, the limitations are set for the reached-to literature that would help 
in understanding paradox and developing the practice utility. Brain plasticity 
and behaviour contribution to this work is limited to the consequent changes of 
the brain by changing a behaviour in order to embrace, accept, navigate paradox 
or any approach of such in business and support and sustain the idea of 
practicing it to reach a holistic understanding of it thus use it to shape the future 
of business and organizations. 
 
6.1.  Contributions 
 
This thesis has contributed by providing a theoretical approach of the missing 
side in paradox theory literature that seems to be the dominant stream. This 
theoretical approach consists of a practice utility and stream for trial error 
concept of paradox manifestation in the business world.  
 
6.2.  Limitations and suggestions for future research   
 
With the purpose of self-development and the quest for knowledge by involving 
and embracing the paradoxes of business, one avenue for further study would be 
research into developing the aspects of the practice utility proposed in this work 
by broadening the research scope to other science fields to provide different 
insights.  
There are a couple of limitations in completing the methodology part of this 
work; it is extremely difficult to get responses for the questions asked from 
leaders due to countless reasons: availability, receiving many similar requests 
66 
 
 
and other reasons of such, that is why, the process of preparing survey has 
endured many changes to finally settle for 9 questions and settled for 48 
responses.   
67 
 
 
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8.  APPENDIX 1 
 
The participation in the survey was entirely voluntary and responses were 
treated with strict confidence and data will not be shared with any third parties 
or used for commercial purposes. 
Survey link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WF6DNDB 
 
Paradox and Business management 
 
The aim of this questionnaire is to evaluate the knowledge quotient on 
paradox tensions in organizations and the need for a model that would 
help executives cope with these tensions. 
 
Paradox can be defined as 
"contradictory yet interrelated elements—elements that seem logical in isolation but 
absurd and irrational when appearing simultaneously”  
(Lewis, 2000: 760). 
 
This work is a part of Master's thesis project 
By Mourad Mechiche 
Master's student at university of Vaasa, Finland 
Degree program in Economics and Business Administration 
Tél: +358449178392 
Email: a111655@student.uwasa.fi 
 
 
 
 
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