A Circadian Theory of Paradoxical Leadership

Paradoxical leadership—the integration of leadership behaviors that are seemingly contradictory, but nevertheless interdependent—is becoming increasingly important in today’s complex and turbulent business environments. Despite evidence for the positive consequences of paradoxical leadership, little research has examined how and when leaders can effectively integrate or reconcile opposing leadership behaviors. Two of the most fundamental paradoxical challenges that leaders face include the need to integrate control and empowerment, as well as reconciling collective rules with followers’ individual needs. In this article, we advance a circadian theory of paradoxical leadership that outlines how leaders can combine episodic thinking with circadian principles to achieve a dynamic equilibrium between the opposing poles of these two leadership paradoxes. Our temporal framework explains how leaders can effectively structure paradoxical leadership episodes that leverage their own and their followers’ circadian processes within a broader framework of situation-driven leadership. In doing so, we contribute to future research by providing a novel circadian perspective on how paradoxical tensions in organizations can be reconciled within the constraints of situational demands.