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Organizational scholars have long been interested in how jazz musicians manage tensions between structure and freedom, plans and action, and familiarity and novelty. Although improvisation has been conceptualized as a way of managing such paradoxes, the process of improvisation itself contains paradoxes. In this essay, we return to jazz improvisation to identify a new paradox of interest to organizational scholars: the paradox of intentionality. To improvise creatively, jazz musicians report that they must “try not to try,” or risk undermining the very spontaneity that is prized in jazz. Jazz improvisers must therefore control their ability to relinquish deliberate control of their actions. To accomplish this, they engage in three interdependent practices. Jazz musicians intentionally surrender their sense of active control (“letting go”) while creating a passive externalized role for this sense of active control (using a “third ear”). Letting go allows new and unexpected ideas to emerge, while the metaphorical third ear can identify promising ideas or problematic execution and, in doing so, re-engage active agency (“grabbing hold”). Examining the practices within creative improvisation reveals the complexity of the lived experience of the paradox, which we argue suggests further integration among organizational research on improvisation, creativity, and paradox.

Two major approaches to manager development in schools are identified. The first provides a tool kit for purposive action; the second is aimed at helping managers cope with the pressures and dilemmas of the job. The need for the sharing and coping style of manager development is traced to the cultural diversity that can exist within schools. Schools, as organisations, are seen within the context of recent work on culture in human service organisations. A framework of manager development which tries to synthesise both approaches within a single perspective is developed.

Concerns the stances that Indian and UK managers take towards ethical issues at work. This topic is part of the broader cross‐cultural research agenda on managerial values. Makes a contribution to the subjects of business ethics and corporate citizenship. The responses of samples of Indian and UK managers to ethical issues were classified, using a research instrument called Redundancy, by eight ethical stances that are defined in a conceptual framework presented. The results are used to clarify issues that arise from the literature about Indian and UK managers’ values. The tentative findings are that Indian managers’ ethical stances were similar to those of Western managers but that, compared with the UK respondents, they were more likely to experience ethical tension between their personal, espoused, stances and those they took at work. The preference for a pragmatic, ethical puzzle, approach to issues, that was reported by both Indian and UK samples, is seen as a problem in developing good corporate citizenship. Presents an agenda for future research.

Comprises Part II of a two‐part exploration of the consequences of variability in the design of appraisal schemes. While Part I was descriptive, Part II suggests prescriptions to help scheme designers to devise proposals which are commensurate with appraisees′ worries, arguments and expectations.

Over the past decades, scholars advanced foundational insights about paradox in organization theory. In this double volume, we seek to expand upon these insights through interdisciplinary theorizing. We do so for two reasons. First, we think that now is a moment to build on those foundations toward richer, more complex insights by learning from disciplines outside of organization theory. Second, as our world increasingly faces grand challenges, scholars turn to paradox theory. Yet as the challenges become more complex, authors turn to other disciplines to ensure the requisite complexity of our own theories. To advance these goals, we invited scholars with knowledge in paradox theory to explore how these ideas could be expanded by outside disciplines. This provides a both/and opportunity for paradox theory: both learning from outside disciplines beyond existing boundaries and enriching our insights in organization scholarship. The result is an impressive collection of papers about paradox theory that draws from four outside realms – the realm of belief, the realm of physical systems, the realm of social structures, and the realm of expression. In this introduction, we expand on why paradox theory is ripe for interdisciplinary theorizing, explore the benefits of doing so, and introduce the papers in this double volume.

The purpose of this study is to identify how ethical stances can be used to develop a frame set in the design of a web-based decision support system (DSS) for ethical decision-making and to test both the efficacy of these frames and the potential of such a tool for individuals and groups in both leadership development situations and organisational practice. Unethical behaviour by executives is a frequently cited reason for erosion of trust with other stakeholders.

Utilising action research, by choosing ethics frames such as heuristics, a web-based ethics DSS designed to enable users to explore ethical issues from multiple perspectives was constructed and this was beta-tested with a major UK bank and a global oil company.

In orchestrating constant revisions of the ethics frames in the tool, learning from each research cycle was identified, a new form of action research, a design action research, which emphasises the importance of collaboration in the design of such decision-making tools, was offered and the tool for management development and other applications was successfully beta-tested.

It was demonstrated to management developers how web-based systems might be designed by non-information technology professionals; the framing literature was added by demonstrating the value of engaging in dialogue about ethical issues of concern to managers and their organisations and thus improving decision-making; and additions were made to the literature on ethics and Information systems (IS) and contribution toward action research in the fields of IS and ethics was done.

In financial markets investors and borrowers are faced with a whole structure of prices and interest rates on financial instruments. The determination of equilibria in these markets is a complex process and presents a challenge to researchers and practitioners alike. In this article we are concerned with a single section of these markets where we study the relationships between the interest rates or yields on financial securities which can be distinguished from each other (as far as possible) only by their term to maturity. We only cover the structure of money or nominal yields, as an examination of the real returns would require another arti‐cle in itself.

Reproduces the main texts of hitherto unpublished reminiscences of the style and influence, as a teacher, of Allyn Abbott Young (1876‐1929) by 17 of his distinguished students. They include Bertil Ohlin, Nicholas Kaldor, James Angell, Lauchlin Currie, Colin Clark, Howard Ellis, Frank Fetter, Earl Hamilton, and Melvin Knight (brother of Frank Knight who, with Edward Chamberlin, was perhaps Young’s most famous PhD student). There has recently been a revival of interest in Young’s influence on US monetary thought and in his theory of economic growth based on endogenous increasing returns. These recollections of his students (addressed to Young’s biographer, Charles Blitch) shed light on why Young has, at least until recently, been renowned more for his massive erudition than for his published writings.