Understanding a Crisis through Communal Theorizing

The COVID-19 pandemic has fostered uncertainty and several unforeseen consequences. It has revealed many tensions at individual, organizational, and societal levels, such as in work-life balance, organizational innovation for today and tomorrow, and addressing public health while sustaining economic activity. As paradox scholars, we not only lived these tensions in our daily lives, but we were also inspired to engage the paradox research community in better understanding these tensions. This PDW is to showcase our efforts over the last several months, which resulted in a collection of four papers in the Journal of Management Inquiry, scheduled to be in print in April 2021. Over 40 scholars contributed to short essays organized across the four papers, which included papers on societal tensions, organizational tensions, tensions for individuals within organizations, and a commentary on our overall process. We use this collective achievement as a springboard for further efforts in developing paradox theory and theories on crises more broadly.