Dilemmas in organizing: - Differences between conflict and dilemma

Abstract
Organizational paradoxes situate employees and managers in dilemmas that are often associated with tension and psychosocial strain. In this paper we explore how dilemma-thinking may enable a sustainable social and organizational work environment? In order to do that we set out to look into this phenomenon from a complexity and dialectical perspective. We combine the experience of dilemmas with the role of difference and processes of sensemaking in organizational becoming. From the theoretical framing we continue to explore to what extend dilemma-thinking may be a way forward to cope with this social and organizational work environment challenge, thus also easing potential tension and psychosocial strain. Dilemma-thinking in this setting is an action-research approach, in which an explicit framework of paradoxes and dilemmas is introduced to the organizational participants, and is associated with participatory dialogue about and around dilemma-situations from the participants everyday-practices. The paper is situated in the context of a hospital ward in the Copenhagen area, in which nurses experience dilemmas with regard to their primary task