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This article explores the next phase of public management: the era of paradox. As new public management (NPM) policies and practices were shown to be inadequate to solve the problems of public management, they began to be complemented–rather than re-placed–with new reforms and practices. These reforms and practices are often contradic-tory to existing ones, leaving managers in a difficult position. By extending the debate about contradictions and paradox from the policy level to the organisational level, we show how public sector managers work to resolve these contradictions in a situated man-ner, keeping the contradictions alive rather than resolving them permanently.