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  • Academy of Management Journal

How Leaders with Divergent Visions Generate Novel Strategy: Navigating the Paradox of Preservation and Modernization in Swiss Watchmaking

By: Ryan Raffaelli, Rich DeJordy and Rory McDonald
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Abstract

How do leaders with divergent visions for their organization come together to create a novel strategy? This paper employs paradox as a lens to investigate how leader-dyads can integrate opposing strategies to produce a new, generative approach. Drawing on a qualitative historical case study of Switzerland’s largest watch company—Société de Microélectronique et d'Horlogerie—during the quartz crisis in Swiss watchmaking, we induce a process model from the activities of two leaders whose relationship embodied the tensions and strategic contradictions of preserving the past and modernizing for the future. The model specifies a set of individual, relational, and structural mechanisms by which leaders productively engage with a preservation-modernization paradox to facilitate novel strategy in the wake of a discontinuity. We interpret our findings in terms of the demands of navigating the management and outcomes of strategic paradoxes. While tracing the theoretical and practical implications of our model and our findings, we address leadership conundrums characteristic of organizations confronting paradox.

Keywords

Strategic Paradoxes; Senior Leaders; Organizational Reinvention; Leadership; Technological Innovation; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Change; Manufacturing Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Switzerland

Citation

Raffaelli, Ryan, Rich DeJordy, and Rory McDonald. "How Leaders with Divergent Visions Generate Novel Strategy: Navigating the Paradox of Preservation and Modernization in Swiss Watchmaking." Academy of Management Journal (forthcoming).
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About The Authors

Ryan L. Raffaelli

Organizational Behavior
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Rory M. McDonald

Technology and Operations Management
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More from the Authors
  • Productive Tensions: How Every Leader Can Tackle Innovation's Toughest Trade-Offs By: Chris Bingham and Rory McDonald
  • The Past Is Prologue? Venture-Capital Syndicates' Collaborative Experience and Start-Up Exits By: Dan Wang, Emily Cox Pahnke and Rory McDonald
  • Managing Innovation at Atrium Health: 'Never Let a Good Crisis Go To Waste' By: Derek van Bever, Rory McDonald and Anibha Singh
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