23076: When Will Organizations Underperform? The Necessity of Strategic and Structural Paradoxes (session 26410)

Competing (strategic) demands pressure executives and middle managers to remain competitive by balancing opposite yet simultaneous and interrelated (organizational) practices. To avoid the jack-of-all-trades trap, we introduced causal necessary reasoning to the paradox theory, intending to delineate sufficient (nice-to-have) from necessary (must-have) conditions for superior organizational performance. Using the strategy-structure-performance paradigm as a theoretical framework, 115 organizations and 555 respective unit managers were surveyed within three European countries. Our multisource and time-lagged study showed that, if absent, strategic paradoxes of glocalization and strategic ambidexterity cannot be substituted for achieving organizational integration. Moreover, the structural paradox of organizational integration (and not strategic paradoxes) appeared indispensable (much-needed) for superior organizational performance. At the same time, these critical success factors remained positive yet insignificant predictors of structural and performance outcomes. Overall, this study contributes to paradox and strategic management literature by providing a fresh look at the core strategic management framework, supporting the chain of necessary conditions, and verifying the knotted nature of organizational paradoxes.

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