Moshe Farjoun

This essay broadens the conversation on the state of organizational contradictions and paradox research by turning to dialectics—a time-honored, living perspective on social processes and relations, which continues to influence our understanding of the past, present, and future. Dialectics distinctive relational process worldview sets it apart from approaches stressing equilibrium, linearity, and coherence, making it highly relevant to a world in flux. I propose that dialectics is already present in strategy research and in contemporary business, and can become even more central to strategy, addressing core questions in the field and propelling it in new directions. Strategy scholars can draw on dialectics principles as a generative tool kit to construct new theories and managerial tools. Dialectics can also be used as a theoretical lens to understand emerging empirical phenomena such as the rapid advent of artificial intelligence. Finally, dialectics critical stance and philosophical grounding makes it a particularly attractive perspective for challenging existing theoretical models and for considering alternatives.

This essay broadens the conversation on the state of organizational contradictions and paradox research by turning to dialectics—a time-honored, living perspective on social processes and relations, which continues to influence our understanding of the past, present, and future. Dialectics distinctive relational process worldview sets it apart from approaches stressing equilibrium, linearity, and coherence, making it highly relevant to a world in flux. I propose that dialectics is already present in strategy research and in contemporary business, and can become even more central to strategy, addressing core questions in the field and propelling it in new directions. Strategy scholars can draw on dialectics principles as a generative tool kit to construct new theories and managerial tools. Dialectics can also be used as a theoretical lens to understand emerging empirical phenomena such as the rapid advent of artificial intelligence. Finally, dialectics critical stance and philosophical grounding makes it a particularly attractive perspective for challenging existing theoretical models and for considering alternatives.

The cornerstone of architectural leadership (AL) theory is to structure the organization in service to its strategy so as to improve its capabilities and enhance its value. Rather than relying on the CEO’s personal influence, AL centers on structuring and operating core organization‐wide processes that diffuse leadership influence across managerial levels and harness the whole organization better to attain its goals. AL is grounded in the academic management literature. It complements theories that focus on targets but neglect the means needed to achieve them. Though most managers spend much of their time dealing with the means while struggling with insufficient infrastructure, existing management theories ignore these issues or say little about them. Architectural leadership theory provides a solution to this lacuna. Applying AL can help managers create value by developing the infrastructure required for strategy implementation.

Organizational scholars have shown a growing interest in drawing on the philosophy of Pragmatism to address contemporary problems and theoretical questions. We elucidate Pragmatism’s core ideas and show their uniqueness and relevance to the field. We present Pragmatism as a problem-solving philosophy that builds on a rich and behaviorally plausible model of human nature, views reality in terms of processes and relations, and highlights the interplay of meaning and action. We demonstrate how Pragmatist ideas can help transcend the perennial problem of agency and structure and illustrate how these ideas might contribute to one specific domain of research on categories and categorization. More generally, Pragmatism is well suited to understanding the contemporary challenges of change and complexity especially as they play out across multiple levels of analysis. We argue that Pragmatism provides a “third way” between rational and structural approaches and represents a living school of organization theory in its own right.

The environment of most organizations is beset by continuous change, instability, flux, and unpredictability. If organizations are to survive and prosper under such conditions, they must be capable of dynamic adaption and stable and reliable performance. Organization theory recognizes the importance of both imperatives, but typically assumes that they pull organizations in different directions. Building on Selznick’s theory of institutionalization, we argue that institutions can, should and sometimes do master the challenge of being responsive and stable, while avoiding the potentially destructive tendencies of rigidity and opportunism. Contrary to a prominent view that strong institutionalization leads to inertia, Selznick’s theory suggests that strong institutions are capable of preemptive adaptation to protect the character of their institutions. We describe this state as one of dynamic conservatism and explore four types of preemptive internal reform strategies: strategic retreat, self-cannibalization, experimentation, and repositioning. We conclude with a consideration of factors that might moderate the ability of strong institutions to proactively change in order to remain the same.