Paradox mindset and paradox intensity: Relational, affective, and pragmatic approaches to managing conflicts in the creative economy

Managers in the creative economy face the challenge of enabling breakthrough ideas and artistic excellence and managing commercial success and client needs. Increasingly, scholars have drawn on paradox theory to understand how managers in the creative economy address the conflicts arising from managing both artistic excellent and commercial success. Prior research on paradox has established the importance of paradox mindset for developing a ‘both/and’ rather than an ‘either/or’ approach. Scholars have also identified behaviour patterns of conflict management in successfully managing paradoxes. Based on 40 interviews with managers in the creative economy, we develop a taxonomy of conflict management approaches used by managers. We identified relational, affective, and pragmatic approaches managers in the creative economy pursue to manage conflict. Our findings show that managers with low paradox mindset facing high paradox intense situations primarily pursue pragmatic approaches. Our main findings are twofold. Firstly, we add to paradox theory by linking paradox intensity to conflict management approaches. We argue that paradox intensity is a key difference in how conflicts are managed. We add to the literature on the microfoundations of paradox by elaborating on the paradox mindset-paradox intensity dyad and conflict management approach. Empirically, we add to the literature on failing to manage conflicts generated by paradox. We elaborate on the role of affective and pragmatic approaches which managers use to address conflicts.