Tensions and paradoxes in temporary organizing

Joseph Lampel, Timo Braun, Joseph Lampel, Timo Braun

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781839093494
• eBook ISBN: 9781839093500
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Breaking new ground in research on temporary organizations, this volume of Research in the Sociology of Organizations brings together papers that examine how temporary organizations navigate the tensions and deal with the paradoxes that are the consequences of temporal limitation.

This volume explores diverse forms of temporary organizations including: animation festivals, cultural celebrations, unconferences, start-up accelerators, humanitarian emergency response, strategic initiatives, projects and megaprojects, project portfolios and networks of projects. This volume uses 3 key questions to unify this empirical diversity:

1. The pace and rhythm of temporary organizing: how do conflicting temporal norms shape work and life in temporary organizations? 

2. What are the tactics and practices that temporary organizations develop when dealing with the tensions and paradoxes they confront? 

3. When relying for resources and working on behalf of permanent organizations, how do temporary organizations deal with the tensions between attachment to, and detachment from, permanent organizations.

PART I

TEMPORARY ORGANISING: EVENTS

CHAPTER 1

THE BELONGING PARADOX AND IDENTITIES IN FESTIVALS

Robert DeFillippi and Yesim Tonga Uriarte

ABSTRACT

Festivals are conceptualised in this chapter as temporary organisations embedded in more permanent structures (e.g. festival lead organisation). Festivals face a series of paradoxical tensions common to temporary organisations in creative fields. These tensions arise, in part, from the diversity of actors involved in festivals and the distinctive values and priorities they bring to their festival organisational involvement. Lucca Comics & Games (LC&G), which is one of the biggest comic-cons in the world, operates in the intersection of different institutional contexts, which include a wide range of actors involved. Thus, tensions appear within the LC&G domain as a result of these actors’ different levels of involvement in the festival organisation and their diverse identities. These tensions and their resolutions will be analysed from the perspective of extant theory on paradox. A specific focus of this chapter is on the belonging paradox, which concerns the role of competing identities among different types of festival participants and how these competing identities are manifested in the organisational identity of LC&G, its structures and processes. Our study provides evidence of identity tensions as both/and relationships that are not mutually exclusive or antagonistic. The authors also suggest that ‘place identity’ requires further examination as a distinctive feature of temporary organising in festivals, considering its role in mediating tensions arising from the belonging paradox amongst festival main actors (exhibitors, artists, public bodies and lead organisation employees).

Keywords: Paradoxical tensions; belonging paradox; place identity; temporary organising; festivals; comic-con

I. INTRODUCTION

Temporary organising has engaged scholars interested in the relationship between the temporary and the more durable elements of organising project work and the paradoxical tensions that arise (DeFillippi & Sydow, 2016). Hence, persistent tensions arising from contradictions between interdependent elements of temporary organising are pervasive, and they occur within and across management domains, levels and perspectives (Schad, Lewis, Raisch, & Smith, 2016). ‘Effective temporary organizing from this point of view entails creation of temporary organizing practices that transcends the contradictions inherent in this form of organizing (Schad et al., 2016)’ (Braun & Lampel, 2020). As a result, it is of crucial importance to further investigate the nature of these paradoxes’ diverse types and relationships, the value of varied individual and collective approaches, and their impact on differing outcomes and more complex dynamics (Schad et al., 2016).

Within this framework, festivals provide a fruitful base to improve our understanding of how tensions and paradoxes influence and shape new forms of temporary organising (Schüßler & Sydow, 2015). The objective of this study is, therefore, to develop new knowledge on the belonging paradox (Smith & Lewis, 2011), which concerns the role of competing identities in the context of festivals as a prominent type of temporary organising. The research focuses on two research questions:

1. What kind of belonging/identity tensions occur in festivals and how they are manifested by festival participants?
2. How are these competing identities separated/integrated in the festival’s organisational identity, structures and processes?

To this end, we adapt a case study approach and use one of the biggest comic-cons in the world, LC&G, to investigate our research questions. Since its first edition, LC&G operates in the intersection of different institutional contexts, which include a wide range of actors involved. Thus, tensions appear within the LC&G domain as a result of these actors’ different levels of involvement in the festival organisation and their diverse motivations and values. The tensions and their resolutions will be analysed from the perspective of extant theory on paradox (i.e. Schad et al., 2016). Using a multi method approach on the data collected through multiple sources, we analyse the competing identities among different types of festival participants and how these competing identities are manifested in the organisational identity of LC&G and its structures and processes. Building on previous research on paradox perspective and our results, we argue that research on belonging paradoxes and related effective organising practices in the context of festivals contribute to our understanding of temporary organising more generally.

The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows. The related literature is reviewed in the following section. Then the design of the empirical study is described, and the results are presented. Finally, the findings are discussed with respect to the existing literature in the conclusions.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

Festivals as Temporary Organisations

Schüßler and Sydow (2015) characterise festivals and similar events as the result of creative organising efforts aimed at producing unique experiences and symbolic values. Hence, such events are similar to other forms of temporary organisations, most notably projects (e.g. Løwendahl, 1995; Lundin & Söderholm, 1995), in that they are typically set up by highly interdependent, fluid teams or project networks for a limited period of time in uncertain environments to achieve largely unpredictable and possibly creative outcomes.

For many such temporary organisations in cultural industries, the organisers struggle to balance the tensions between participation and bureaucracy in order to be able to sustain creative activity while maintaining the overall project organisation (Lampel, Lant, & Shamsie, 2000). Event organisers in cultural industries thus face the typical conflicting demands between artistic and economic logics (DeFillippi, Grabher, & Jones, 2007; Manning & Sydow, 2011).

Festivals are characterised by their ‘fluctuating membership, temporary collaboration and high turnover’ (Rüling & Strandgaard Pedersen, 2010, p. 321). Consequently, many festivals which started as a single project result in the creation of their own permanent organisational/institutional settings, while diffusing distinct norms, standards and business practices. Within this framework, festivals appear as phenomena organised, marketed and managed by an operative festival organisation. Hence, a relatively permanent festival organisation is entrusted with coordinating and aligning the diverse values and goals of temporary participants in any individual edition of a festival.

Jaeger and Mykletun (2013) have undertaken qualitative research on how a series of artistic festivals in Finnmark, Norway influence the identities of festival participants and how processes related to festivals influence the need to belong. Overall their findings from their case studies echo a more generalised perspective on how festivals reinforce identity and belonging summarised by Quinn (2005):

Festivals constitute an arena to strengthen local continuity by creating opportunities to draw on shared histories, shared cultural practices and ideals, as well as creating settings for social interactions. They are arenas where local knowledge is produced and reproduced, where the history, cultural inheritance and social structures that distinguish one place from another, are revised, rejected or recreated. (p. 928)

Findings from previous research on festivals and events suggest the value of examining the types of paradoxical tensions that may arise from competing sources of identity amongst festival stakeholders. Hence, we now turn to leading theoretic perspectives on paradoxes and tensions.

Paradoxes and Tensions

Smith and Lewis (2011) define paradox as ‘contradictory yet interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time’ (p. 382). Putnam, Fairhurst, and Banghart (2016) differentiated the concept of paradox from other types of competing demands, such as tensions that include ‘stress, anxiety, discomfort, or tightness in making choices’ (p. 69), dilemmas that include ‘either-or choices in which one alternative must be selected among mutually attractive (or unattractive) options […] typically [in] one-shot encounters’ (p. 73), dualisms that include ‘the existence of opposite poles, dichotomies, [or] binary relationships that are able to create tensions, but can be separated’ (p. 69) and dualities that include the ‘interdependence of opposites in a both/and relationship that is not mutually exclusive or antagonistic’ (p. 69).

Putnam et al. (2016) advocate preserving the interrelationships among multiple tensions by capturing an array of sensemaking accounts from organisational actors, since actors often develop competing interpretations of paradoxical situations (e.g. based on their organisational roles, hierarchical positions, socio-economic attributes, etc.). Capturing multiple voices, then, often surfaces multiple tensions in and across organisational levels and in various combinations.

Smith and Lewis (2011) delineate a comprehensive taxonomy of paradoxes. These paradoxes suggest possible thematic tensions likely to arise. Our analysis will focus on the belonging paradox. Belonging paradoxes emphasise competing identities within organisations. Within cultural industries, there is likely to be competing allegiances between one’s identification with specific artistic peers in one’s profession and identification with co-workers within a creative arts organisation. These identities can become conflicted when the values and priorities of one creative peer group are at odds with organisational values and priorities. For example, one of the most typical conflicts is between adherence to an artistic community’s creative priorities and the cultural arts organisational priorities for attracting the support of a large and diverse community of organisational event participants and sponsors.

In their own study of paradox in a permanent organisation, Jarzabkowski, Lê, and Van de Ven (2013) observed the following gap in paradox research:

Although multiple paradoxes at organizational and individual levels have been recognized in the literature, these dynamics of how paradoxes in organization structure spill over to individual role and group identity paradoxes and how these paradoxes at different levels coevolve have not been addressed in prior research. (p. 246)

Our research attempts to contribute to paradox research on temporary organisations by identifying how individual role and group identity and belonging paradoxes are represented in a specific festival and how the resulting tensions from these diverse identities are incorporated in the organisational identity of the festival and some specific structural arrangements for temporary organising.

Responses to Paradoxical Tensions

Scholars have identified a variety of possible organisational responses to managing the paradoxical tensions created by contradictory identities and their related values, assumptions and practices. Putnam et al. (2016) classified this literature in terms of either-or, both-and and more-than responses. Either-or approaches refer to the treatment of paradoxical poles as independent elements that can be separated through the selection of one pole over the other pole (e.g. Seo, Putnam, & Bartunek, 2004) and the assignment of these poles to different actors or organisational units (e.g. Jarzabkowski et al., 2013). Both-and approaches relate to the treatment of paradoxical elements as inseparable and interdependent by developing ‘paradoxical thinking’ abilities that enable organisational actors to achieve a compromise through integration or balance (e.g. Miron-Spektor, Ingram, Keller, Smith, & Lewis, 2018). More-than approaches include less well-known responses to paradox that aim at continuously connecting and reformulating opposites in workable ways by reframing them as being part of one another (e.g. Denis, Dompierre, Langley, & Rouleau, 2011) or transcending them at higher levels of abstraction through rhetorical practice (e.g. Bednarek, Paroutis, & Sillince, 2017).

Poole and Van de Ven (1989) proposed four approaches to managing and responding to paradox – opposition, spatial separation, temporal separation and synthesis. Opposition, now more often termed ‘acceptance’, denotes ‘accepting the paradox and learning to live with it’ (p. 566). Spatial se...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction. Tensions and Paradoxes in Temporary Organising: Mapping the Field
• Part I. Temporary Organising: Events
• Part II. Temporary Organising: Projects
• Part III. Temporary Organising: Networks
• Index