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Lookup NU author(s): Professor John Sillince
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Organizations are often required to meet contradictory objectives. An important response to such paradoxical tensions is transcendence, the ability to view both poles of the paradox as necessary and complimentary. Despite the centrality of transcendence to existing conceptual frameworks within the paradox literature, we still know little about its practice. We address this gap by analysing rhetorical practices across three science organizations. We develop a dynamic view of transcendence by outlining four rhetorical practices: Ordering, Aspiring, Signifying and Embodying and by exploring the underlying enabling features of these practices in order to explain how they construct a response to paradox. In particular, we develop a framework to show the bundling together of these rhetorical practices and the process of oscillation between focus (paradoxical content/context), time (stability/change) and distance (maintaining/reducing) to construct transcendence. Finally, we show how this response unfolds dynamically and how these practices interrelate to construct moments of transcendence.
Author(s): Bednarek R, Paroutis S, Sillince JAA
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Organization Studies
Year: 2017
Volume: 38
Issue: 1
Pages: 77-101
Print publication date: 01/01/2017
Online publication date: 13/08/2016
Acceptance date: 01/03/2016
Date deposited: 05/04/2016
ISSN (print): 0170-8406
ISSN (electronic): 1741-3044
Publisher: Sage Publications, Inc.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0170840616655486
DOI: 10.1177/0170840616655486
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