In the past decade paradox scholarship significantly advanced our understanding about the mechanisms which explain organizational responses to paradox. Paradox scholars acknowledge that responses to paradox follow certain underlying normative orders (i.e., structured systems of values that provide a justificatory framework for organizational practices). Accordingly, such scholarship assumes that normativity (i.e., values-driven decision-making that is action guiding) plays an important role in the formation of organizational responses to paradox. However, we do not know yet how and why normativity informs the formation of such responses. In a single case study, we therefore qualitatively investigated the formation of responses to the value-laden paradox of online hate speech by a media organization over the course of 12 years to solve this puzzle. Importantly our study unravels how normativity facilitates a change from a principle-based to a process-based response to the value-laden paradox. We show how the normative dejustification of the existing response to paradox leads to an interim organizational state of normative consternation from which normatively justified experimentation for a responsible response to paradox emerges. The result of an experiment is then turned into a novel response to paradox through ex-post normative justifications. We contribute to paradox scholarship on normativity and governance.
