Search results

Although social networks play an important role in individual ambidexterity, few studies have examined the impact of salespeople's social networks on sales-service ambidexterity. The purpose of this paper is to explore how salespeople's internal and external social networks affect sales-service ambidexterity.

The unique data of 331 salespeople from 39 units in retail banking industry and insurance industry were collected, and the hierarchical linear model was adopted to test the hypotheses. Finally, the alternative measure of the dependent variable and the alternative estimation method were adopted for robustness test.

The results show that the strength of salespeople's internal social networks and the extensiveness of salespeople's external social networks could facilitate sales-service ambidexterity of salespeople separately and synergistically. Salespeople's role breadth self-efficacy partially mediates the influences of internal and external social networks on sales-service ambidexterity, while empowerment climate and transformational leadership positively moderate the aforementioned mediational process by strengthening the relationship between salespeople's role breadth self-efficacy and sales-service ambidexterity.

Practical guidelines are provided for managers to shape ambidextrous salespeople by facilitating salespeople's internal and external social networks, promoting transformational leadership and creating empowerment climate within the unit.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this paper is the first to systematically examine the impact of salespeople's social network on sales-service ambidexterity. Drawing from social cognitive theory and the ambidexterity literature, this research reveals the mechanism of how salespeople's internal and external social networks contribute to sales-service ambidexterity.

Social networking services (SNSs) have been praised for their social capital (SC) benefits. However, the time displacement hypothesis in Internet research may challenge such an optimistic view. In response to this challenge, this study aimed to develop a theoretical model that uncovers the transformation, rather than displacement among online and offline SC in terms of bonding and bridging types during SNSs use.

The concept of SC was divided into the following four types: offline bonding, online bonding, offline bridging and online bridging. A theoretical model grounded in individual ambidexterity theory was developed that uncovered the transformation among these types of SC, and it was tested a sample of WeChat users in China. Furthermore, the theoretical model included the concept of cognitive ambidexterity, which promotes transformation.

As an exploitation process, offline bonding SC mediated the relationship between SNSs use and online bonding SC. As an exploration process, online bridging SC mediated the association between SNSs use and offline bridging SC. In addition, cognitive ambidexterity moderated the exploration and exploitation processes positively.

This study demonstrated that SNSs users strategically and successfully manage SC benefits through exploitation and exploration processes, and ambidextrous individuals can do this more effectively. Accordingly, this study proposed the transformation hypothesis in the SNSs context.

Paradox theory looks at ambidexterity as a set of paradoxical yet interrelated demands. A form of response to such paradoxes is transcendence. Currently, there is limited understanding of the concept among researchers. Using concepts from the Indian philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, this paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of transcendence, highlight some of the epistemological challenges it presents and suggest ways in which the concept can be used by practitioners and ambidexterity researchers.

The paper uses concepts and theories from advaitic episteme to look at concepts of paradox and transcendence. The method of adhyaropa–apavada is introduced as a way to help individuals get a transcendental perspective of paradoxes. The application of the method is demonstrated using secondary data from published research on ambidexterity management.

It is postulated that transcendence is an “intuitive experience” born out of reflexive thinking. The dialectic of adhyaropa–apavada (affirmation followed by recension) is suggested as a pedagogical tool that can promote reflexive thinking.

The paper significantly adds to the theoretical understanding of paradoxes and transcendence in ambidexterity literature. The paper also makes a strong pedagogical contribution to literature by suggesting the dialectic of adhyaropa–apavada that can be used by managers to promote reflexive thinking among subordinates when faced with paradoxical situations.

This study highlights the business failure experienced in pandemic times, its impact on entrepreneurs' perception of failure and the reciprocal relationship between entrepreneurs' perception of failure and individual ambidexterity.

The study provides empirical evidence on interpreting the long-term outcomes of business failure in pandemic times and develops a deeper insight by utilizing a two-year research design (time 1: 2020 and time 2: first half of 2021). It draws on data from 200 entrepreneurs who experienced business failure in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic times which is a global crisis.

The results revealed that both challenge and hindrance appraisals of failure are associated with individual ambidexterity over time. Self-efficacy and social valuation of re-entry decisions are mediators between hindrance appraisal and individual ambidexterity on both time 1 and time 2. Moreover, there is a positive reciprocal relationship between self-efficacy and ambidexterity throughout the two time periods. In regard to participants' current employment status, hindrance appraisal, self-efficacy and perceptions of ambidexterity linkages were found to be significantly different in terms of unemployment and employment.

To the best of the author's knowledge, it is the first time that the individual ambidexterity of failed entrepreneurs was explored after hard times in the pandemic. It comprehensively helps to understand the importance of cognitive appraisal of hard times and identifies the perceptional and behavioral consequences of failure in entrepreneurship.

Although prior studies have found that transactive memory system (TMS) in top management team (TMT) can enable innovation ambidexterity, works that focus on only the direct role of TMS and neglect the question of how the differentiated knowledge of the TMS are integrated. The purpose of this paper is to further elucidate how a TMS promotes ambidexterity and examine both its mechanism process and the conditions influencing the process.

This study is based on a questionnaire survey of 94 high-tech enterprises in China.

The findings show that the positive relationship between TMS usage and innovation ambidexterity is mediated by TMT shared leadership, which refers to collective decision-making behaviors and can integrate the heterogeneous knowledge of the TMS into coherent strategic forms. The authors also found that having a TMS was more positively related to innovation ambidexterity via shared leadership when top managers have high team learning goal orientation or high team performance approach goal orientation.

This research contributes to the literature on the antecedents of innovation ambidexterity by showing the effects of TMS and TMT shared leadership, responding to the call to explore how TMT cognitive structures interact with behavioral processes to shape ambidexterity. This study also contributes to TMS research by taking team goal orientations into consideration, which promotes understanding of the effectiveness of TMS in an achievement context. In addition, the authors bring distributed cognition to the fore as a novel fuel for understanding how shared leadership forms.

The aim of this paper is to deconstruct the organizational capability of ambidexterity into a typology of hierarchical dimensions that includes each type’s enabling mechanisms and capabilities.

This work reviews and integrates extant literature on ambidexterity and the hierarchy of capabilities to distinguish dimensions of ambidexterity and link each type to capabilities identified in prior research.

A hierarchy involving zero-, first- and second-order ambidexterity is developed. Mechanisms and capabilities for creating and sustaining each type of ambidexterity are described.

As only an initial and conceptual foray toward the purpose stated above, this research does not attempt to argue a comprehensive theoretical framework. Nor does it intend to extend or propose new theory regarding the origins of ambidexterity capabilities or the specific causal relationships between them.

Although prior literature emphasizes approaches for achieving and maintaining ambidexterity, these generally refer to what is described here as zero-order ambidexterity. The hierarchical and holistic system view offered in this research suggests greater importance for second-order ambidexterity and capabilities of top managers for exercising cognitive, behavioral and process leadership complexity.

Recent literature on ambidexterity begins to suggest varied types or levels of ambidexterity. No known work, however, has expressly deconstructed ambidexterity into component dimensions via the hierarchy of capabilities framework.

The academic discipline of ambidexterity is recognized as an established field within strategic management and organization theory. Extant works in the field recognize the recent burgeoning academic emphasis on ambidexterity and suggest either an impending focus or a decline of the field. Although there have been attempts to review the field of ambidexterity, most of these reviews have not followed a systematic and scientific approach for extricating the key themes emerging within. The purpose of the study is to inductively and systematically capture the main elements constituting the current boundary of the field.

To achieve the stated purpose, this study uses data/text mining to analyze abstracts of scholarly ambidexterity papers published over the past two decades (1997-2016) in academic journals. Using text-mining, lexical analysis is performed to compute the frequency distribution of words. The frequently occurring words are studied in detail and their association with ambidexterity is also studied by means of co-relation. This analysis (used for generation of first order themes) is then complemented by a manual analysis of each first order theme to come up with trends and sub-themes lying within.

The analysis extracts eight distinct themes that indicate the current boundary of ambidexterity research. The findings highlight the potential areas for future academic attention such as networks, business models, leadership, dynamic capability and their inter-linkages with the field of ambidexterity. Overall, the field of ambidexterity is receiving heightened academic interest coupled with a dynamic proliferation across a host of related management fields. Apart from the required future consolidation, the field also needs new insights to enhance its explanatory power.

This study analyzes abstracts of 504 works on ambidexterity (in the last two decades) to inductively indicate the current boundaries of the field using a data/text mining approach. Papers that do not explicitly mention ambidexterity in their abstracts, title or keywords are not included in the analysis.

The insights of the analysis will not only help researchers but also offer practitioners a good view point about the myriad of paths (not restricted to contextual, structural and temporal) through which ambidexterity can be promoted within and at the organization level.

The three-fold contribution of this study is a systematic and scientific approach adopted to define the current boundary of the field of ambidexterity, followed by an exploration of a set of eight distinct themes and finally the identification of ongoing debates, research gaps and future research questions in light of the analysis performed.

Ambidexterity is the ability of an organization to balance exploitation and exploration. Ambidextrous organizations perform better in managing productivity-innovation dilemma. Although the literature on ambidexterity has expanded, much less attention has been paid to the antecedents of ambidexterity. The purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents of ambidexterity and develop a multi-level taxonomy of the antecedents.

Based on an extensive review of the literature, the paper develops criteria for categorizing the antecedents and then develops a taxonomy of the antecedents.

Two taxonomy frameworks have been developed: one is based on infrastructural elements, including organizational structures, processes, and context, while the other is based on different organizational levels (i.e. organizational, group, and individual) at which different antecedents exist. Most of the antecedents of ambidexterity reported in the literature fall in the category of “processes” – both individual/social and technical/procedural.

The paper provides an enhanced understanding of the antecedents of ambidexterity, how they relate to each other, and how they can be grouped together. The framework can help managers to apply the antecedents at various organizational levels, resulting in a more structured approach to ambidexterity.

The key contribution of the paper is in providing a multi-level understanding of the antecedents of ambidexterity. To the best of the author’s knowledge, such a taxonomy of the antecedents of ambidexterity has not been provided in previous publications.

Consumer satisfaction towards a brand is one of a firm’s important performance outcomes. However, building a strong green brand to foster consumers’ satisfaction is often challenging for firms. Drawing on the dynamic capability and mechanism-enabling perspectives of ambidexterity. The purpose of this research is to explore mechanisms of perceived brand performance and green trust through which green brand ambidexterity acts as a facilitator of consumer satisfaction.

The hypothesized relationships were tested by both partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM; symmetric approach) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA; asymmetric approach) with data collected from a green consumer questionnaire survey in Hong Kong.

The results from PLS-SEM indicate that green brand ambidexterity affects consumer satisfaction through multiple mediating paths of perceived brand performance, green trust-consumer and the sequential integration of perceived brand performance and green trust. Results from fsQCA further reinforced these findings.

The present research provides a nuanced understanding of how ambidexterity enhances consumer satisfaction in the context of a green brand by identifying multiple mechanisms.

There is a lack of research on how green brand ambidexterity affects green brand outcomes from the perspective of value creation for consumers. The present research fills this gap by providing more comprehensive explanations of mechanisms for green brand ambidexterity to facilitate consumer satisfaction. It also offers a better understanding of how the effects of green brand ambidexterity are viewed on a path-dependency that is aligned with the dynamic capability perspective of ambidexterity and how green trust forms a critical path to enable green brand ambidexterity and perceived brand performance to enhance consumer satisfaction.

Repeatedly engaging in strategic exercises may lead to a certain weariness, as the same strategic processes are used over and over again. The authors advocate looking at business model as a new concept to challenge existing beliefs and what is taken for granted. This paper aims to better understand how business model renews strategic processes. Does it change the strategic process, or is it a new strategic tool? Based on an analysis of the strategic processes of eight small- and medium-sized enterprises, the authors identify four mechanisms for challenging existing strategic processes: cognitive challenge, focus on process, mindset and mindset change, cognition and capabilities. Renewing strategic tools and processes is necessary to change the lens through which the environment is viewed. This change of perspective happens because of newness in the process of how top managers read the organisation and the environment, thus adapting their business more quickly than do other companies. To combine the understanding of history necessary for strategic thinking with the ability to think outside the box requires a certain flexibility of mind, which can be called cognitive strategic ambidexterity.

Based on an analysis of the strategic processes of eight small- or medium-sized enterprises, this paper shows that it is not because of business modelling that top managers may renew their strategic approach and think outside the box.

Based on an analysis of the strategic processes of eight small- and medium-sized enterprises, the authors identify four mechanisms for challenging existing strategic processes: cognitive challenge, focus on process, mindset and mindset change, cognition and capabilities. Renewing strategic tools and processes is necessary to change the lens through which the environment is viewed. This change of perspective happens because of newness in the process of how top managers read the organisation and the environment, thus adapting their business more quickly than do other companies.

A lot of research has been conducted in the fields of strategy as practice and business model. The newness added by this article is the interlinkage between the two fields of research. Looking at the process of strategy through the lens of business modelling has so far not been covered. Cognitive strategic ambidexterity is the key.