Organisations, industries, and societies often grapple with paradoxes - opposing and interrelated demands that persist over time. While questions of opposition and interrelation have received extensive scholarly attention, we know little about persistence, or why paradoxes resist closure and repeatedly resurface, regardless of how they are managed. Drawing on a qualitative historical analysis of the US coffee industry from the 1910s to the 2020s, we explore the temporal intricacies of paradox persistence through the ongoing tension between the industry's idealism and pragmatism. We identify three mechanisms - -catalysing contextual events, pole sedimentation, and ongoing attempts at balancing - that intertwine paradoxical concerns with history and characterise paradox persistence as both continuity and change over time. Our study contributes to paradox theory and business history by emphasising the significance of history and meaning evolution for paradox persistence, as well as the elusive nature of balancing processes.

Despite rich depictions of paradox navigation strategies, and the recognition that they are fraught with uncertainty, research reveals relatively little about how leaders navigate paradoxical tensions when improvising in the face of highly unpredictable and quickly evolving events. We conducted a narrative study of how French President Macron navigated the tension between the paradoxical poles of "saving lives" and "preserving life as usual" during the pandemic. Our article surfaces three central elements that form a model of improvised paradox navigation in stormy conditions: turning points, fog of uncertainty, and chaotic learning. Our model contributes to paradox theorizing by shedding light on paradox navigation in highly turbulent environments and has implications for management learning and improvisation.

Prior research predominantly portrays states of 'betwixt and between' in identity construction as unsettling, given the ambiguity and uncertainty they raise. However, our study suggests that in-betweenness can be experienced with comfort. To characterize such process of identity construction, we appeal to Turner's concept of liminoid, involving optionality, in contrast to the concept of liminal, involving obligation. Using an extensive dataset of interviews and observations on Twitter, we show how journalists comfortably construct online identities 'betwixt and between' as they exert autonomy in this process and learn to skilfully balance the freedom they enjoy with the constraints they still face. By reintroducing the underexplored concept of liminoid and extending it through the notion of autonomy, we clarify prior research conflating different identity construction processes with the concept of liminality. Furthermore, we provide a nuanced picture that takes into account structural constraints by showing that to ensure the comfort of their experience individuals must develop a liminoid competence.

Focusing on the case of a successful French pharmaceutical family firm – VetCo, we develop a process model of family firm identity maintenance by non-family members. Being the first family-owned pharmaceutical actor exclusively dedicated to animal health worldwide, VetCo has a strong family firm identity. The maintenance of this identity is remarkable, as VetCo experienced a withdrawal of the owning family when its founder suddenly passed away and, later on, when other family members disengaged from operations. Using grounded theory, we build a process model of identity maintenance that emphasizes meaning multiplicity. Specifically, we identify three main mechanisms of meaning preservation – passing on the family legacy, unifying the metaphorical family and modelling the family business – and two mechanisms of meaning connection – holding on and bridging. In elaborating theory on family firm identity maintenance, this study contributes to family business and organizational identity scholarships.

The phenomenon of geographic agglomeration is such a reality in the creation industries that some cases, like Hollywood, have offered fertile fields of analysis for researchers. Yet the particularity of these industries has hardly been taken into account in research on the subject. This article examines the specific characteristics of creative industries in relation to the question of geographic clustering. Based on the case of videogames in Ile-de-France, and through an inductive interview approach, it highlights three main results. It relativizes the notion of cluster by showing that videogames’ playing field consists of several spatial scales related to the various activities they involve. It highlights the relative unimportance that immediate proximity has for the firms, and the fact that the relevant scale is the metropolis. Finally, it shows that the question of proximity is hardly specific to creative industries, which relativizes the importance of creativity in their territorial dynamics.

El fenomeno de la aglomeracion geografica es una realidad dentro de las industrias creativas, en la medida en que los casos procedentes de estos sectores, como el de Hollywood, han proporcionado un terreno fertil para que los investigadores lo analicen. Sin embargo, la especificidad de estos sectores se ha tenido muy poco en cuenta en los trabajos sobre estas cuestiones. En este articulo se examinan las especificidades de las industrias creativas en lo que respecta al tema de la agrupacion geografica. Basandose en el caso de los videojuegos en la region de Ile-de-France y utilizando un enfoque inductivo mediante entrevistas, se destacan tres conclusiones principales. Se relativiza el concepto de agrupacion mostrando que el ambito de actuacion de las empresas de videojuegos se compone de varias escalas espaciales relativas a las diversas actividades que implican. Se destaca que la proximidad inmediata tiene escasa importancia para las empresas y que la escala relevante es la de la metropoli. Por ultimo, se muestra que la cuestion de la proximidad apenas es especifica de las industrias creativas, lo que conduce a relativizar la importancia de la cuestion de la creatividad en la dinamica territorial de estos sectores.

Le phénomène d’agglomération géographique est une réalité dans les industries de la création, au point que des cas issus de ces secteurs, comme Hollywood, ont offert des terrains d’analyse fertiles pour les chercheurs. Pourtant, la spécificité de ces secteurs a été très peu prise en compte dans les travaux sur ces questions. Cet article étudie les spécificités des industries de la création vis-à-vis de la question du regroupement géographique. À partir du cas du jeu vidéo en Ile-de-France, et par une approche inductive par entretiens, il met en avant trois résultats principaux. Il relativise la notion de cluster en montrant que le terrain de jeu des entreprises du jeu vidéo se compose de plusieurs échelles spatiales, relatives aux diverses activités qu’elles impliquent. Il souligne le peu d’importance de la proximité immédiate pour les entreprises, et que l’échelle pertinente est celle de la métropole. Il montre enfin que la question de la proximité est guère spécifique aux industries de la création, ce qui conduit à relativiser le poids de l’enjeu de la créativité dans la dynamique territoriale de ces secteurs.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to systematically review online ethnography and its boundary challenges. The paper especially focusses on how researchers draw space boundaries, set time boundaries and engage their online field. Design/methodology/approach – The authors perform a systematic review of extant literature and identify 59 papers in 40 different journals as online ethnographies from various management disciplines. The authors perform both qualitative and quantitative analyses on papers in the sample. Findings – The paper identifies how online ethnographers both define boundaries and engage their online field. The paper shows that some of the advantages of online ethnography actually prompt researchers to favor-specific research designs over others. Research limitations/implications – The authors only focussed on articles adopting online ethnography in organization and management studies that are listed in Social Sciences Citation Index database. Online ethnographies in other research fields and indexes are not studied in this paper. Practical implications – The paper makes suggestions on how to complement existing online ethnographies to reach a more comprehensive practice of online ethnography. Social implications – The systematic review may help researchers to locate useful online ethnography examples across various management disciplines and may contribute to the maturation of online ethnography. Originality/value – The paper synthesizes emerging trends in online ethnography and identifies how specific advantages actually prompt online ethnographers to limit themselves in their research designs.

While technological change has been much studied in the arts field, it has never been considered in terms of the creative process from a micro perspective. The authors analyze the creative process in the context of a cultural industry charicterized by both digital plasticity and the intertwining of creativity and technology: the videogame industry. They use a case study approach to examine the extent to which technology, when used as a tool for creation, interacts with the creative process and highlights the relationship between human creativity and materiality. The authors identify two interconnected processes: the design of gameplays for next-gen consoles and the design of new games initiated by improvements to an existing engine. They find that digital plasticity enables constant inquiry and a reworking and accumulation of artifacts. They identify several configurations of human and material agency linked to two concepts: triggering and alignment. Finally, they characterize this interplay as a process of "creative negotiation" by stressing its nonlinear and unpredictable nature. These findings refine our understanding of the creative process in the cultural and creative industries by stressing the importance of materiality at a micro level, suggesting ongoing change in technology rather than revolutionary disruptions at the macro level. The results also enrich the technology literature by adding a more nuanced account due to the specific open-ended nature of the cultural industries.