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This study aims to use “both–and” thinking of Yin-Yang philosophy to extend the field of leadership literatures and explore the influences of paradoxical leadership and emotional intelligence on organizational identification and turnover intentions of nurses.

The authors adopted a cross-sectional survey completed by 285 nurses in Taiwan. SPSS 22, PROCESS and AMOS 21 were used for data analysis.

The results reveal that paradoxical leadership has a significant positive relationship with nurses’ organizational identification and a significant negatively relationship with their turnover intentions, and organizational identification partially mediated the relationship between paradoxical leadership and turnover intentions. The results further show that emotional intelligence strengthens the effect of paradoxical leadership on organizational identification, and paradoxical leadership had a stronger indirect effect on turnover intentions through organizational identification under strong emotional intelligence.

Paradoxical leadership can strengthen managers’ abilities in dealing with interrelated and substantial issues and correspond to organizing and belonging paradoxes in holistic thinking processes. Health-care organizations must shape a coordinated institution and offer training initiatives to increase managers’ ability and attitude to control organizational rules and procedures while allowing employees’ flexibility and autonomy according to the requirements of the situation, which will maintain both organizational short-term benefits and long-term growth.