We Have To Do This and That? You Must be Joking: Constructing and Responding to Paradox Through Humor

This paper adopts a practice approach to paradox, examining the role of micro-practices in shaping constructions of and responses to paradox. Our approach is inductively motivated. During an ethnographic study of an organization implementing paradoxical goals we noticed a strong incidence of humor, joking, and laughter. Examining this practice closely, we realized that humor was used to surface, bring attention to, and make communicable experience of paradox in the moment by drawing out some specific contradiction in their work. Humor thus allowed actors to socially construct paradox, as well as—in interaction with others—construct potential responses to the multiple small incidences of paradox in their everyday work. In doing so, humor cast the interactional dynamics that were integral in constructing two response paths: (i) entrenching a response, whereby an existing response was affirmed, thereby continuing on a particular response path, and (ii) shifting a response, whereby actors moved from one response to paradox to another, thereby altering how the team collectively responded to paradoxical issues. Drawing on these findings, we reconceptualize paradox as a characteristic of everyday life, which is constructed and responded to in the moment.

How constructions of the future shape organizational responses: climate change and the Canadian oil sands

This empirical study examines the relationship between constructions of the future and anticipated organizational responses to climate change. Findings from the Athabasca oil sands region of Alberta, Canada indicate that actors’ views of climate change affect not only the way they construct the future of oil sands development, but also which responses they see as legitimate. Specifically, whether actors construct a future of no development, partial development or full development of the oil sands, influences the combinations of organizational responses they recommend (i.e. not responding, lobbying, engaging, developing and informing). These findings contribute to our understanding of organizational responses to climate change by showing that (1) climate action requires more than actors simply viewing climate change as strategic; (2) different constructions of the future create alternative strategic environments that necessitate divergent responses; (3) strong future constructions narrow the repertoire of business responses to climate change; and (4) in this process governments play a crucial role beyond setting climate change policy. This study thus highlights the importance of studying future constructions if we want to understand current organizational responses to environmental issues that contribute to climate change.