Paradoxical Thinking Vs Cause And Effect Thinking: A Comparison

In most colleges and universities students are taught “cause and effect” thinking at the expense of paradoxical thinking.

This type of thinking hinders accomplishing mastery. Define both terms, explain, and compare them. Explain why cause and effect thinking hinders achieving mastery.

An example of a company that demonstrates paradoxical thinking

Paradoxical Thinking, a process where the personal characteristics are identified as well as defined that are in contrast with each other. Paradoxical thinking helps to bring out positive aspects of contrasting personal characteristics (Tian & Smith, 2014). Following steps as well as guidelines that are available for paradoxical thinking helps in applying positive aspect for the personal characteristics so that they can make choices positive leading to a successful outcome. Paradox mainly involves contradiction, exclusive elements mutually that are to be presented as well as to be operated at same time. All characteristics are contradictory from each other. The aim of paradoxical thinking involves finding out ways which includes complimenting characteristics with one another. Those complementing characteristics can help in improving the performance in situations that are challenging.

Paradox that are personal can also be used for explaining the successes owned by the athletes, business leaders or can be CEO of the company, or political leader or many be educational administrators (Conteh et al., 2014). This report explains the details of paradoxical thinking and its importance of learning. There is an example of the U.S. postal service whose views on paradoxical thinking are describe briefly. The reasons to learn paradoxical thinking are explained in this report along with the reasons not to use paradox thinking among the eight skills of Intelligence. This report also explains about how paradoxical thinking can be used in leadership and in management skills.

The organization that is taken as example in this report is Postal Service of U.S. According to U.S. Postal Service, the main aim of the company is provide all the publics of America with trusted, universal, as well as affordable services (Galuppo et al., 2014). According to them, they are the only one carrier service in America that provides postal service to each address without considering the location all the days in a week. Their report said that they delivers 152.9 million delivery points in the nation. Their market is growing day by day and the company expects to serve all its citizens more efficiently. There is an increase in the postal service in America as because of their increase in population as well as growth of home development. According to their data, the houses completions that are owned privately increased to 3.4 percent in June compared to the data of previous one year. Paradox lies in where the market grows exponentially, but there is no increase in the revenue structure of the organization. With the increase in population of America, and the increased number of points of delivery there is an increase of fixed cost of the Postal Service in last few years. But there is no increase in the volume of the revenue for the organization. Along with the revenue, the organization is also effected in terms of increased energy cost, diverse technologies as well as evolving technologies and trend that moves away all traditional letters from electronic medium of communication. There is a high impact on the electronic medium of communication on the traditional letters (Wherren, 2013). As the trend is moving away from the traditional letters form to electronic form, it has impacted the postal service of U.S. This has led to significant decrease in volume that is handled every day. Decreased volume have led to decrease in revenue in the organization. There occurs a paradox thinking in this situation. As a result of this, the postal service of U.S. has find out two ways where the cost can be cut short along with the increasing growing market. This paradoxical issue is addressed by the U.S. Postal service by improving the finances as well as streamlining the network for improving the efficiency, increase the revenue as well as reduce the operating cost.

Reasons to learn paradoxical thinking or not and discussing the reasons of doing so

Main reason for learning paradoxical thinking is gained many importance in business world. There are many buzz phrases that are used by employees usually for controlling the chaos, breaking reference frame, making fuzzy logic, getting out of the box as well as helps to make creative destruction (Conteh et al. 2014). All the problems that can be viewed from different angles can be included in paradoxical thinking instead of concentrating on one particular perspective. This is done to resolve the problem efficiently.

The people who advocates the paradoxical thinking states that all people needs to think put of the box from normal thinking and think differently (Tian & Smith, 2014). They needs to do deep analysis regarding to any contradictory thinking. This can give some new thought in the market different from others. Paradoxical thinking does not involves science involved in it. This is because in paradoxical thinking, the pattern of thinking is different from others. Invention or solution can sometime does not make sense but those thought can appeal to the targeted audience (Hameiri et al., 2016). The main reason to learn paradoxical thinking is developing the thinking of people through open mindedness, as well as with courage that takes the risks as well as experimenting all the new ideas as well as thought. It is very much important to have an alert regarding all absurd ideas which are present in the time at that time.

For an organization, the employees need encouragement for playing with all vague ideas that are inside the organization (Zhang et al. 2015). This is because there always remains a chance of getting the right proposition being clicked at the right time which can be benefitted for increasing the performance of the company. Openness is an important part of this critical way of thinking which allows all individuals to learn many new subjects that are not linked with any professions. It is very important to extend all the boundaries of learning and thinking so that all unleashed features can be addressed (Brusoni & Rosenkranz, 2014). The most basic foundation of paradoxical thinking is that although being skeptical, paradoxical thinking involves looking at all things from different perspectives.

Paradox thinking is one of the factors in eight skills of intelligence. The eight skills of intelligence are judgment, reason, imagination, perception, logic, memory, intuition as well as paradox. The least used factor in eight skill of intelligence is paradox (Hahn et al. 2014). This is because it contains the ability to manipulate, reverse, as well as synthesize who is in the opposite side.

The paradoxical thinking is used the least as because it is irrational thinking. This allows people to think in an illogical technique. Most of the people are not habituated to think in that way. Some businesses also do not involve illogical or such kind of irrational thinking (Lewis, Andriopoulos & Smith, 2014). The traditional thinkers, some of the people and some specialists thinks that the way of thinking paradoxically is non-sense to them and is not logically accepted or is self-contradictory. Paradoxical thinking involves risks.

Reasons for using less Paradoxical thinking

The organizations have dynamic environments while paradox management mainly increases the level of complexities in the organizations (Eriksson, 2013). The successful leader as well as managers in the organization should know about how to use paradoxical thinking in the organization. They should also know about how to implement paradoxical thinking to increase their productivity as well as achieve organization goals that are fixed for the organization. Paradoxical thinking includes the leaders to have skills so that they can deal with the contradictions as well as embrace the incompatible forces. To manage different opinions and thinking rationally is an art and to become a paradoxical thinker, there should be a different level of thinking. The leaders and the managers following paradox thinking have different skills to deal those situations so that they can bring ambiguity via mindset.

To achieve the goals in an organization, there are many challenges that the leaders needs to face. These problems might be regular as well as normal in an organization that follows paradoxical thinking (Hameiri et al., 2014). There might be different problems, obstacles, challenges or tasks that a leader has to face by being a paradoxical leader in an organization. A leader has to plan as well as has to create small tasks to be completed as well as accomplish all the major tasks that are involved in the organization.

A successful leader who thinks paradoxically mainly has four fundamentals style of leadership (Ingram et al., 2016). Those are commanding, visionary, rational and empowering. If all the leaders uses these leadership style, imagines the future as well as focus on the facts as well as empowers or commands, the outcome of the organization will be an extra ordinary one. Paradoxical leader will be then successful to manage as well as lead their team successfully and achieve the organization goals as well as visions that are set for the organization.

References

Brusoni, S., & Rosenkranz, N. A. (2014). Reading between the lines: Learning as a process between organizational context and individuals’ proclivities. European Management Journal, 32(1), 147-154.

Conteh, C., Greitens, T. J., Jesuit, D. K., & Roberge, I. (Eds.). (2014). Governance and public management: Strategic foundations for volatile times. Routledge.

Eriksson, P. E. (2013). Exploration and exploitation in project-based organizations: Development and diffusion of knowledge at different organizational levels in construction companies. International Journal of Project Management, 31(3), 333-341.

Galuppo, L., Gorli, M., Scaratti, G., & Kaneklin, C. (2014). Building social sustainability: multi-stakeholder processes and conflict management. Social Responsibility Journal, 10(4), 685-701.

Hahn, T., Preuss, L., Pinkse, J., & Figge, F. (2014). Cognitive frames in corporate sustainability: Managerial sensemaking with paradoxical and business case frames. Academy of Management Review, 39(4), 463-487.

Hameiri, B., Porat, R., Bar-Tal, D., & Halperin, E. (2016). Moderating attitudes in times of violence through paradoxical thinking intervention. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(43), 12105-12110.

Hameiri, B., Porat, R., Bar-Tal, D., Bieler, A., & Halperin, E. (2014). Paradoxical thinking as a new avenue of intervention to promote peace. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(30), 10996-11001.

Ingram, A. E., Lewis, M. W., Barton, S., & Gartner, W. B. (2016). Paradoxes and innovation in family firms: The role of paradoxical thinking. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 40(1), 161-176.

Lewis, M. W., Andriopoulos, C., & Smith, W. K. (2014). Paradoxical leadership to enable strategic agility. California Management Review, 56(3), 58-77.

Tian, Y., & Smith, W. K. (2014). Entrepreneurial leadership of social enterprises: Challenges and skills for embracing paradoxes. Journal of Leadership Studies, 8(3), 42-45.

Wherren, D. A. (2013). Organizational effectiveness: Old models and new constructs. In Organizational Behavior (pp. 145-164). Routledge.

Zhang, Y., Waldman, D. A., Han, Y. L., & Li, X. B. (2015). Paradoxical leader behaviors in people management: Antecedents and consequences. Academy of Management Journal, 58(2), 538-566.