A process for building inter-organizational contextual ambidexterity
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discover a three-step process for building contextual ambidexterity into inter-organizational IT-enabled service processes through developmental interventions.
Design/methodology/approach
A longitudinal action research project was conducted. The empirical study consisted of three consecutive developmental interventions to support the collaborative development effort of an IT company and its customer network to efficiently serve their present and future customers. The data consists of process modeling and simulation workshop discussions, interviews, observation, and archival data. The development effort was studied for over a year.
Findings
The study shows that the three developmental interventions acted as a process for balancing the exploration-exploitation tension in inter-organizational service processes. The sequential interventions facilitated the studied organizations in crossing the inter-organizational knowledge boundaries and creating shared domain knowledge, creating common understanding of the collaborative IT-enabled service processes, and co-developing the coordination mechanisms that are essential for the continuous exploration and exploitation of the new ideas in the future collaborative service processes. These three steps built capacity for the inter-organizational management system to achieve synergies between goals, resources, and activities in the inter-organizational collaboration.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the understanding on the process of building inter-organizational ambidexterity. The study presents a three-step process for building inter-organizational contextual ambidexterity into the IT-enabled service processes through developmental interventions. Research on inter-organizational contextual ambidexterity is combined with research on coordination and knowledge management.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper was processed and accepted by Guest Editors Antonio Ghezzi, Antonella Martini, Emanuele Lettieri, Mariano Corso, and Luca Gastaldi. The research reported in this paper has been conducted in Madeleine and CoCoNet research projects at the Enterprise Simulation Laboratory SimLab, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Aalto University School of Science, Finland. Earlier results have been published in Lavikka’s (2010), Llicentiate’s thesis published in the Dissertation Series of the Aalto University School of Science and in the conference paper Lavikka et al. (2008) “Business process requirements elicitation through process modeling and simulation”, Proceedings of the APMS 2008 International Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems, Innovations in Networks, IFIP, Espoo, Finland, Sept. 14-17, 2008, pp. 349-358.
The Academy of Finland and the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation Tekes with partner companies have financially supported the research, which is gratefully acknowledged. In addition, the authors thank the guest editor, Doctor Antonella Martini and two anonymous reviewers.
Citation
Lavikka, R., Smeds, R. and Jaatinen, M. (2015), "A process for building inter-organizational contextual ambidexterity", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 21 No. 5, pp. 1140-1161. https://doi.org/10.1108/BPMJ-12-2013-0153
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited