The responsiveness-consistency paradox in professionalizing ventures: Employee agency, organizational structures, and unintended consequences

Professionalization is a paradox-laden phase in venture growth, as the responsiveness valued by new ventures often clashes with the consistency required for scaling. While paradox literature highlights how actors can alternate between opposing demands, it largely assumes individuals have full agency to respond and emphasizes intended outcomes. Less attention has been given to how organizational structures shape, constrain, or silence agency, and how paradoxical responses may generate unintended consequences. This study addresses this gap through a qualitative case study of RoboVenture, a technology venture professionalizing within a highly regulated industry. Drawing on 39 interviews, multi-week observations, a focus group, and archival materials, we show how paradoxical demands for responsiveness and consistency triggered destabilizing effects when framed as organizational pragmatic paradoxes. Particularly, leaders simultaneously imposed strict processes and called for rapid action, prompting employees to bypass formal structures to sustain responsiveness, with unintended consequences on organizational dynamics and user-centricity. We contribute to paradox literature by empirically showing that ‘both/and’ strategies are not always preferable, as structures can constrain agency and produce unintended outcomes, and by addressing a key gap on the interplay between agency and structure through a structuration lens. • This study explores professionalization as a paradox in ventures, where scaling pressures clash with entrepreneurial agility. • Shows how employee responses, shaped by structures, can unintentionally destabilize dynamics and erode user-centricity. • Integrates Paradox and Structuration theories to show how agency and structure shape professionalization paradoxes in firms. • Offers practical insights on how ventures can support employee agency when navigating responsiveness–consistency tensions.