How the Public Sector Got its Contradictions - The Tale of the Paradoxical Primate. In- tegrating the Idea of Paradox in Human Social, Political and Organisational Systems with Evolutionary Psychology.

Abstract

The specific subject of this article is about contradictions – or paradoxes – in the public sector. But it actually goes much wider to ask some fairly fundamental questions about social sciences in general. And when I say wider, I do mean wider. It will dip into public policy, management, organisation theory, organisational behaviour, and human evolutionary theory and particularly evolutionary psychology. It will also say something about my personal intellectual and political history, because this is inextricably tangled up with the story I want to tell. The essence of the article is simply stated – it will seek to synthesise ideas from organisational and management theory about paradoxes and contradictions with evolutionary psychology to provide an explanation of the many contradictions and paradoxes that surround and permeate public management. First, a brief note about the language that I employ. I use the word ‘paradox’ to denote apparently mutually exclusive and contradictory elements of a situation or system that nevertheless do co-exist. As I will explain later, I prefer the term ‘paradox’ to that of ‘contradiction’ because in the Marxist and Hegelian traditions, which have largely appropriated the term contradiction, it has become inextricably linked to the idea of synthesis – that is resolution of contradictions. My emphasis is on irresolvable, permanent, contradictions and the notion of ‘paradox’ captures this more accurately and strongly (Quinn and Cameron 1988). An article of this type is an excuse to say something fairly broad about ‘where you are coming from’ – as the Californians would say. As someone with both a non-traditional academic history (which happened by accident) and a non-traditional approach towards academia (which is more a matter of choice) I often have a problem. Academic colleagues frequently ask each other, on first acquaintance, ‘what’s your area then?’ They expect something general like ‘I’m a sociologist/economist/political scientist’ as a reply. My problem with this question is simple – I don’t have an academic ‘discipline’ in this sense, so I have taken to replying half in jest and half seriously, “I’m a militant eclectic.” I gather, incidentally, that my good friend Professor Con-

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