2024(7):56-83
Abstract:
The strategic change context is full of various paradoxical problems that are intertwined, influenced, pried, and transmitted, forming a complex and chaotic strategic change context. This context increases the difficulty for decision-makers to explore the root causes of new strategy formulation, making it urgent to summarize the linking law between paradoxes and systematically portray the strategic change contexts. Coupled with the fact that paradoxes tend to be hidden and not easily identifiable in non-change contexts but highlighted and easily identifiable in strategic change contexts, strategic change contexts offer the possibility of systematically exploring organizational paradoxes and their interlinked relationships. Using the strategic change data of ten firms as a sample, this study adopts a mixed research method consisting of classical grounded theory and cognitive mapping to analyze the paradoxical problems in strategic change situations from the perspective of multi-level paradoxes and to construct a model of an organizational multi-level paradox network. The study found that: 1) There are 18 pairs of paradoxes, such as “financial-responsibility” in strategic change contexts, categorized into six types of paradoxes, such as performing paradox, which align with the logic of the division of “policy orientation-requirements-objectives-directions-values-processes”; 2) The paradoxes are distributed vertically at the individual, operational, strategic, and institutional levels of the organization, and horizontally across the five functional departments of regulation, operations, R&D, production, and marketing, which intersect, constituting the positional form of the organizational multi-level paradox network; 3) Paradoxes consist of causal or sequential relationships between four primary conditions. There are two kinds of relationships between paradoxes of the same level, namely, “same-layer chain order” and “same-layer nesting,” and three kinds of relationship between the cross-layer paradox types, namely, “cross-layer chain order,” “cross-layer chain co-existence” and “cross-layer nesting,” which constitutes the relational form of the organizational multi-level paradox network; 4) Integrating the positional and relational forms of the organizational multi-level paradox network to construct a model of organizational multi-level paradoxical network, which systematically demonstrates the complexity of a strategic change situation composed of paradoxical relationships and positions. Based on the perspective of a multi-level paradox, this study clarifies the complex and chaotic strategic change context. It provides theoretical references for decision-makers to correctly perceive the strategic change context, accurately grasp the root causes of organizational dilemmas, and make effective strategic decisions.