Managing Strategic Contradictions: A Top Management Model for Managing Innovation Streams

Wendy K. Smith () and Michael L. Tushman ()
Additional contact information
Wendy K. Smith: Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Morgan Hall, Soldiers Field Road, Boston, Massachusetts 02163
Michael L. Tushman: Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Morgan Hall, Soldiers Field Road, Boston, Massachusetts 02163

Organization Science, 2005, vol. 16, issue 5, 522-536

Abstract: Sustained organizational performance depends on top management teams effectively exploring and exploiting. These strategic agendas are, however, associated with contradictory organizational architectures. Using the literature on paradox, contradictions, and conflict, we develop a model of managing strategic contradictions that is associated with paradoxical cognition—senior leaders and/or their teams (a) articulating a paradoxical frame, (b) differentiating between the strategy and architecture for the existing product and those for innovation, and (c) integrating between those strategies and architectures. We further argue that the locus of paradox in top management teams resides either with the senior leader or with the entire team. We identify a set of top management team conditions that facilitates a team’s ability to engage in paradoxical cognitive processes.

Keywords: top management teams; innovation; exploration and exploitation; paradox; cognition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (351)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1050.0134 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:16:y:2005:i:5:p:522-536

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Organization Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().