Managerial Dilemmas: Exploiting Paradox for Strategic Leadership

By Graeme Salaman and John Storey

In the midst of the most severe recession for 80 years there islittle need to argue that organizations are beset by dilemmas andparadoxes. Confidence in prevailing business models and in theunderlying assumptions underpinning business decisions over manydecades has now been shaken. But it is not enough to rail againstarrogance and greed. Within their own (flawed) assumptions bankersand corporate leaders were acting rationally. A major reason forthe failure to anticipate and warn is that observers oforganizations usually tend to view organizations in terms similarto those employed by the people who run them: as rational, sensibleand objective, whereas, in fact, they are usually confused andconfusing, paradoxical and contradictory entities. Paradox is atthe heart of how organizations work (or don't work) yet thephenomenon has been strangely unstudied.

In an age of crisis and uncertainty, dilemmas and paradoxes areespecially evident and prevalent. The fascination and the promiseof paradox is that there is also a sense that there is a hiddentruth entwined within the opposites. This we contend is a challengefor leaders. The ultimate responsibility of leadership is to makesense of these and to handle them in a competent manner.This demands a new mode of leadership. The managementof dilemma and paradox it is contended, the essence ofleadership today. Paradoxical forces provide a dynamism which, although often experienced as potentially threatening, discomforting and negative can also be exciting, promising andpositive.

"The assumption that organizations are rational entities ischallenged every day in the work environment by a rich reality ofasymmetries between conflicting forces, complexity, hiddenintentions and paradoxes. Anyone wanting to understand the realforces that govern organizations should read this book. A must readfor modern leaders who have the intellectual honesty to leadorganisations with open eyes and not with the over simplificationsand clich s of the past"--Giovanni Ghisetti, DirectorBusiness Transformation, Coca Cola Enterprises Europe

"Storey and Salaman's description of the paradoxeswhich characterise leadership today is hauntingly accurate. Theirintelligent optimism that those dilemmas can be met is asencouraging as it is challenging for those of us who have to dojust that. Having read the insights in this book I now understandhow their business advice was always so pertinent."--AndyStreet, Managing Director of John Lewis

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1405160276
• ISBN13: 9781405160278
• Release Date: July 2009
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Length: 266 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.3"