Does job crafting help deal with paradoxes of people management?

Leaders face competing demands or paradoxes such as empowerment and control, and uniformity and individualisation. We conducted 12 in-depth interviews with middle managers in Bengaluru, India to understand the job crafting strategies they used to respond to paradoxical tensions in people management. Through job crafting, leaders can alter their understanding of the tension and their role boundaries to generate a broader range of responses to paradoxes. We extend the understanding from how leaders experience and understand tensions to how they proactively alter their role expectations, translating into practical strategies that can be applied to managing paradoxical tensions.