Table Of ContentPARADOXES OF POWER
AND LEADERSHIP
Why do great companies and other organizations fail, sometimes abruptly? Why do admired
leaders fall from their organizational pedestals? Why do young and promising managers
derail? Why do organizations create and reinforce rules that manifestly damage both them
and those that they employ, serve and sustain? Leadership is a much-d iscussed but ill-
defined idea in business and management circles. Analysing and understanding the skills and
behaviours exhibited in leadership practice reveal that leaders exhibit paradoxical activities
that challenge our understanding of organizations.
In this text, the authors identify leadership behaviours that compete towards business
equilibrium: selfish versus selfless, distance versus proximity, consistency versus individuality,
enforcing professional standards versus flexibility and control versus autonomy. These
paradoxical dilemmas require a reflexive and analytical approach to a subject that is tricky
to define. The book explores the paradoxes of power and leadership not as a panacea for
solving organizational problems but as a lens through which leadership and power are seen
as an exercise in dynamic balance. Read this book as an invitation to the paradoxes of power
and leadership that frame organizational life today. Be prepared to find surprises – and some
counterintuitive arguments.
Providing a thought-p rovoking guide to the traits and skills that will help readers to
understand and navigate paradoxical leadership behaviour, this reflexive book will be a useful
reading for students and scholars of business, management and psychology globally.
Miguel Pina e Cunha is the Amélia de Mello Foundation Professor of Leadership at the
Nova School of Business and Economics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal.
Stewart R. Clegg is Professor in Management at the University of Stavanger Business
School, Norway, and NOVA School of Business and Economics, Portugal.
Arménio Rego is Professor at Católica Porto Business School, Portugal.
Marco Berti is Senior Lecturer at UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney,
Australia.
“In this important work the concept of leadership is refracted through the lens
of the paradoxes of power. By doing so the authors provide an honest, nuanced
account of the dilemmas of leadership, while providing a sophisticated set of con-
ceptual tools to deal with these challenges. This work is a ‘must read’ for leaders and
academics that wish to understand the elusive phenomenon of effective leadership”.
Professor Mark Haugaard, National University of Ireland, Galway.
Editor of the Journal of Political Power, Routledge
“The authors of this book have managed to imbue their work with admirable
contrarian qualities. They are complexifying leadership as a relational- paradoxical
practice and draw broadly across several fields of social science, while at the same
time writing in light- hearted and accessible prose. The book is at once enlightening
and entertaining, providing inroads to the nuances and depths of the research front
while also attending to consequences for action. As a result, the book feels like a
journey through leadership paradoxes that walks the talks. Recommended!”
Arne Carlsen, Professor at BI Norwegian Business School, Norway
“While most leadership books distil prescriptive lists of leaders’ dos and don’ts, in
their thought- provoking collaboration, Miguel Pina e Cunha, Stewart R. Clegg,
Arménio Rego and Marco Berti turn down this one recipe fits all approach.
Rather, they take us on the path to explore leadership’s complex and paradoxical
nature. Relying on vivid examples and sound research, their comprehensive work
unpacks the many paradoxes that any leader faces. Each chapter opens yet another
set of paradoxes that will strike a chord with the readers’ own experience: balancing
strengths and vulnerabilities, trusting yet empowering others, advancing both indi-
viduals’ and team’s needs or following organization’s competing strategies, to name
a few. A must-r ead book to those interested in leading through our uncertain and
rapidly changing times”.
Camille Pradies, EDHEC Business School, France
“Every so often, a book comes out that scholars in the field desperately wish they
had written. This is a supreme example. It places the study of paradox in the main-
stream of leadership studies, a position it so rightly deserves. After this encyclopedic
book, there will be no going back. Scholars, practitioners and students will find it
invaluable”.
Richard Badham, Macquarie Business School, Australia
“This book provides a fresh new approach to leadership. The authors explain leader-
ship as a process that is inherently paradoxical. This important view takes us beyond
naive and heroic views of leadership as an a- contextual set of ‘effective’ practices, to
show how leadership unfolds in response to paradoxes occurring at multiple levels.
Grounded in both the literature on leadership and on paradox, this book extends
knowledge of both areas and provides a welcome contextual understanding of lead-
ership as complex and dynamic. In addition, it is a very enjoyable read that explains
these concepts well”.
Paula Jarzabkowski, Professor, City, University of London
“This ground- breaking book offers a brilliant analysis of leadership in modern
societies. Eschewing simple recipe- driven explanations, it describes how leadership
is an inherently paradoxical practice – one requiring the effective management
of contradictions. A wide-r anging and ambitious inquiry, the book is a required
reading for scholars and students of management and organization”.
John Hassard, Professor of Organisational Analysis
at Alliance MBS, University of Manchester
“This is a timely and important book that embraces the complexity of organiza-
tional life and the increasing demands upon organizations that make leadership
more important than ever, all the more so because it resists distillation to recipes and
invocations. By tackling inherent contradictions in leadership head on, the authors
show that wise and thoughtful leadership matters more than ever, but that in today’s
increasingly complex world – perhaps in any world worth living in – its essence
should not and cannot be distilled to simple formulae and easy to apply principles”.
David Patient, Professor of Leadership, Vlerick Business School
PARADOXES OF POWER
AND LEADERSHIP
Miguel Pina e Cunha, Stewart R. Clegg,
Arménio Rego and Marco Berti
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Miguel Pina e Cunha, Stewart R. Clegg, Arménio Rego and Marco Berti
The right of Miguel Pina e Cunha, Stewart R. Clegg, Arménio Rego and Marco Berti
to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Cunha, Miguel Pina e, author.
Title: Paradoxes of power and leadership / Miguel Pina e Cunha,
Stewart R. Clegg, Arménio Rego, and Marco Berti.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon : New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020053465 (print) | LCCN 2020053466 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138482838 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138482845 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781351056663 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Leadership. | Organizational behavior. |
Executive ability. | Management.
Classification: LCC HD57.7 .C867 2021 (print) |
LCC HD57.7 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/092–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053465
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053466
ISBN: 978-1 -1 38-4 8283- 8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1 -1 38-4 8284- 5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1 -3 51-0 5666- 3 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
About the authors ix
Glossary x
Introduction 1
1 Leadership and paradox 14
2 Paradoxes of self- leadership 47
3 Paradoxes of dyadic relationships 81
4 Paradoxes of team dynamics 108
5 Paradoxes at organizational level 135
6 Recurring paradoxes and ten lines of action 166
References 195
Index 225
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to all the people that throughout the years have allowed us to
make sense of the paradoxes of organizational life. First, participants in executive
courses that we have taught, with whom most of the ideas in this book have been
extensively discussed. Also, there are the numerous colleagues that have discussed
the themes with us, sometimes in collaboration on projects, other times through
their contributions in seminars and academic papers. We are also grateful to those
colleagues who contributed generously with review and feedback on this volume,
including Cary Cooper, Horia Moasa, Paulo Rosado and Wendy Smith. Hermínia
Martins offered generous help, as always, with access to difficult bibliographic
sources.
Part of Chapter 6 draws on Rodrigues, Cunha, Rego and Clegg (2017).
Institutionally, this work was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
(UID/ ECO/ 00124/ 2019, UIDB/ 00124/ 2020 and Social Sciences DataLab,
PINFRA/2 2209/ 2016), POR Lisboa and POR Norte (Social Sciences DataLab,
PINFRA/2 2209/ 2016). We also acknowledge the support from the project
“Developing a European Forum on Paradox and Pluralism – EUFORPP”, a
project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation
program under grant agreement No. 856688.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Miguel Pina e Cunha is the Fundação Amélia de Mello Professor at Nova SBE, Universidade
Nova de Lisboa (Portugal). He studies organization as process and paradox and has co-a uthored
the Elgar Introduction to Theories of Organizational Resilience (Elgar, 2018) and Positive Organizational
Behaviour: A Reflective Approach (Routledge, 2020) and co-e dited Contemporary Social Theory
for Management (Routledge, 2019). His recent articles on paradox appeared in journals such
as the Academy of Management Review, Human Relations, Management and Organization Review,
Organization Studies, Research in the Sociology of Organizations and Strategic Organization.
Stewart R. Clegg is Professor of Management at the University of Stavanger Business
School, Norway, and NOVA School of Business and Economics, Portugal. He is the author of
many books including Strategy: Theory and Practice (Sage, 2020) and Project Management: A Value
Creation Approach (Sage, 2020). He is a prolific contributor to leading journals in the fields of
Organization Studies, Political Power and Management.
Arménio Rego is Professor at Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica
Portuguesa (Portugal). He has published in journals such as Human Relations, Journal of
Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Management and The Leadership Quarterly,
among others. He is the lead author of The Virtues of Leadership: Contemporary Challenge for
Global Managers (Oxford University Press, 2012) and co- author of Elgar Introduction to Theories
of Organizational Resilience (Elgar, 2018) and Positive Organizational Behaviour: A Reflective
Approach (Routledge, 2020). His main research focus is on virtuous leadership, organizational
virtuousness, team processes and individual performance and well- being.
Marco Berti is Senior Lecturer in the UTS Business School, University of Technology
Sydney (Australia). Marco’s research has been published in journals such as the Academy
of Management Learning and Education, Academy of Management Review, Management Learning,
Journal of Management Inquiry, Organization, and Research in the Sociology of Organizations. He is
the author of the Elgar Introduction to Organizational Discourse Analysis (Elgar, 2017).
