Professor Wendy Smith, an internationally acclaimed management scholar and Professor of Management at the University of Delaware, and Professor Eric Knight, Executive Dean of Macquarie Business School and prominent Professor of Strategic Management, would argue that managers don’t have to choose between conflicting pressures and can benefit from engaging with these competing demands simultaneously to produce more creative, generative solutions.

This is paradox theory, and during a six-month visit to Macquarie Business School as part of the faculty’s thriving Visiting International and Domestic Scholar Award program, Professor Smith and Professor Knight have worked to advance several themes of this theory with applications to issues of social entrepreneurship, sustainability, and organisational theory and strategy.

“Leaders face a multitude of strategic paradoxes – contradictory pressures – in business all the time,” Professor Smith explains. “This may be the tug of war between focusing on our current roles or exploring new opportunities, decisions about how to navigate environmental issues amid economic concerns, or challenges to focus on unique local demands or trying to tap into a global community. Individually, these tensions might arise around pressures for work and life, tensions between performing well and learning new things, and many others.”

Professor Smith continues: “In the economic and environmental example, the paradox tensions are between the short-term and the long-term, individual needs and communal needs, and mission-driven outcomes and market-driven demands. Paradox theory offers insight into the nature of these tensions and provides guidance on how individuals and leaders can more effectively engage with them. My recent work argues that managers should shift from ‘either/or’ thinking to ‘both/and’ thinking to manage these conflicting tensions more effectively.” Professor Smith recently summarised the expansive research in her book, co-authored with Marianne Lewis, Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems (HBSP, 20220).

For Professor Knight, Professor Smith’s visit to the Business School has been productive and enlightening – for his own research on how organisations manage complex, contradictory and competing demands, but also for the Department of Management as a whole. The collaboration between the two academics has included a project to explore how paradoxes emerge and are navigated across levels, which they label as ‘nestedness’.

“An example of ‘nestedness’ is how tensions between economy and environment surface at the societal level, organisational level and individual level, and we explored how these levels interact with one another,” explains Professor Knight.

The pair also created a community of scholars across Sydney, and beyond, to explore social enterprises through the lens of paradox theory – led by Associate Professor Anna Krzeminska – and is progressing a new project about how climate negotiators in the COP climate conferences use their personal position and the position of their home country to navigate complex tensions.

“It seems there are plenty of important problems to tackle using organisational theory,” remarks Professor Knight, and the duo’s work in this area will impact the knowledge of leaders and managers. Professor Smith and Professor Knight are also exploring how they can inform and develop future leadership in higher education through books and leadership training.

“Professor Smith is the classic example of the kind of visitor we like to host under our Visiting International Scholar  Award (VISA) program. While at Macquarie Business School, Professor Smith engaged with a large group of academics across our six departments, and across the Australian business schools, and participated in various workshops, seminars, and Higher Degree Research (HDR) sessions. She also worked on various papers with faculty members.

“Our academic visitors provide a global perspective to the research we do at Macquarie Business School, and we are so grateful for their valued contributions to our community. Our interactions with these visitors also help us share our own perspectives with the wider world, furthering our research impact and renown.”

Professor Knight and Professor Smith will commence global leadership roles at the Academy of Management in 2024. Professor Knight will serve as the Chair of the Strategizing Activities and Practices Interest Group and Professor Smith will serve as the Chair of the Organization and Management Theory (OMT) Division at the Academy.