From Stormy Waters to Navigable Seas: How PhD Students Make Use of Coping Mechanisms to Deparalyze Pragmatic Paradoxes

Abstract

Academia is filled with tensions, and PhD students often experience these tensions as pragmatic paradoxes, where power dynamics limit their ability to enact legitimate responses. While existing literature has explored the conditions that give rise to pragmatic paradoxes, less attention has been paid to how individuals, particularly low-status actors, carve out agency to navigate these paralyzing contradictions. This is especially critical for PhD students, as their ability to handle pragmatic paradoxes is a key aspect of their transition from apprentice to independent scholar. Drawing on an exploratory empirical study of PhD management students, and using the transactional theory of stress and coping as an analytical lens, this study develops a three-phase coping model. The article contributes to theorizing pragmatic paradoxes by showing how PhD students reclaim agency through coping mechanisms that render paralyzing paradoxes navigable. Additionally, it shifts the focus from leaders to subordinates, highlighting how their responses evolve, creating new spaces for negotiation and agency, while occasionally reinforcing the conditions that constrain them. This study also contributes to PhD student formation and management education by offering insights into how coping mechanisms influence power structures and foster personal growth within academia.