Managing strategic contradictions in hybrid teams

Abstract

It has become a common practice to organize work teams to include members in multiple geographic locations. In contrast to co-located teams and purely virtual teams, these ‘hybrid’ teams combine face-to-face communication with computer-mediated interaction. In this paper, we report a qualitative study of management practices in three hybrid teams in one organization. We adopt the theoretical approach of strategic contradiction, in which apparently contradictory pairs of elements can be managed by attending to their possible synergies or clarifying their distinctions so as to make balanced trade-offs over time. Our data reveal four sets of paradoxical frames in hybrid teams: remoteness–closeness, cultural uniformity–cultural diversity, rationality–emotionality, and control–empowerment. In referencing these paradoxical frames, teams engaged in three cognitive processes: (a) integrating to produce synergies between opposing tensions, (b) differentiating to clarify distinctions between opposing tensions and to balance trade-offs over time, and (c) polarizing to remove tensions between opposing elements by using one element to reduce the effects of another. Both integrating and differentiating processes were found to be instrumental to sustaining contradictions as interdependent dualities, whereas polarizing processes were found to preserve contradictions as dualisms. Our findings advance the understanding of managing strategic contradictions by showing how managers influence cognitive processes that paradoxically emphasize remoteness and closeness, cultural uniformity and cultural diversity, rationality and emotionality, and control and empowerment.

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