Paradoxical leadership as sensegiving: stimulating change-readiness and change-oriented performance
Leadership & Organization Development Journal
ISSN: 0143-7739
Article publication date: 17 January 2022
Issue publication date: 15 March 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Paradoxical leadership (PL) is an emerging perspective to understand how leaders help followers deal with paradoxical demands. Recently, the positive relationship between PL and follower performance was established. This paper builds on and extends this research by interpreting PL as sensegiving and developing theory about mediation in the relationship between PL and adaptive and proactive performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper develops a new measure for PL as sensegiving and provides a test of the mediation model with data from two different sources and two measurement times in a German company.
Findings
Multilevel mediation analysis (N = 154) supports the mediation model.
Originality/value
The paper presents sensegiving about paradox as a core element of PL, which informs the choice of change-readiness as mediator. This study also develops and validates a scale to measure PL in future research.
Keywords
Citation
Sparr, J.L., van Knippenberg, D. and Kearney, E. (2022), "Paradoxical leadership as sensegiving: stimulating change-readiness and change-oriented performance", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 43 No. 2, pp. 225-237. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-04-2021-0161
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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