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Scholars of ambidexterity focus on the need for strategic leaders to explore and exploit opportunities synergistically. Yet it remains unclear how such dynamic capabilities develop. Addressing this question, this chapter investigates the role of social cognitive self-regulation in fostering ambidexterity as a dynamic capability among entrepreneurs. Results of a mixed method, multiple case study of founder managers suggest that complex patterns of self-regulation are associated with ambidextrous thinking and decision making among entrepreneurs, often in combination with strong values and a sense of emotional engagement. I propose a new model of these processes and discuss its implications.

This chapter compares and contrasts the application of cognitive ambidexterity by women entrepreneurs in Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, and the United States of America. It focuses on how women entrepreneurs exhibit entrepreneurial leadership during first customer acquisitions. Analysis of interview data showed that the reasons for venture creation, the choice of venture, and the environmental context faced by women entrepreneurs influence the relative emphasis placed on prediction logic and creation logic. While women entrepreneurs in Kenya, Mexico, and Nigeria thrive with creation logic, those in the USA place more emphasis on prediction logic but cycle between both logics to enhance selling to early customers.

Purpose: Nikoletta Taylor and Close, (2022) asserts that a skill gap analysis can be used to determine the lacking skill and carry out recruitment based on that gap. It goes without saying that for a student, that would be their first employment, and with internships, there is no way to experience all aspects of the working world.

Need for This Study: When it comes to the recruiter’s expectations and the applicant’s skills, specifically among students, a gap still exists, leading to a need for practical exposure for applicants.

Study Design/Methodology/Approach: A quantitative study was adopted. A questionnaire was prepared with constructs and variables from the review and a total of 403 responses was collected from reputed institutions in Tamil Nadu.

Findings: This study reveals that skill development is needed; it is found that experiential learning through the gamification process is a suitable learning strategy. The experiential learning factors supporting skill development are self-efficacy, outcome expectation, interest, choice actions, and performance, followed by review, feedback, and continuous improvement.

Originality/Value: Learning all these factors through the gamification process would give students practical exposure to real-time scenarios of the corporate world. The proposed model gives students experience through gamification and learning activities.

The highly unpredictable, complex, and dynamic business environment forces companies to innovate constantly. One organizational response to coping with environmental pressures is organizational ambidexterity, that is, the ability to pursue simultaneously the exploitation of existing capabilities and the exploration of new opportunities. It has an impact on the way of working, and consequently, organizations need to reevaluate their talent strategies. With this conceptual contribution, we first provide a fresh view on talent and talent management (TM) by suggesting an ambidextrous TM approach, including novel TM practices that have been rather neglected in the so far dominant traditional TM approach. It centers on the system-controlling element of an ambidextrous mindset. Second, in a theory-based framework, we explain how dynamic TM capabilities (hybrid, dual, and ambidextrous TM), which represent processes for deploying, developing, and shaping talent, can contribute to gaining competitive advantages in various ambidextrous structures reflecting the complexity and dynamism of and within human resource (HR) ecosystems. The authors advance the under-researched process perspective on TM by using the lenses of the HR ecosystems discussion, insights from a dynamic view on the person–environment fit, and dynamic capabilities. The authors conclude with a broad agenda for future research in TM in dynamic environments.

The dynamic capabilities perspective focuses on the ability of an organization to develop its resource base in order to meet environmental expectations. Therefore, it is closely interrelated to the issue of managing the interaction of exploration and exploitation. The competence of continuously optimizing the interaction of exploration and exploitation has been referred to as organizational ambidexterity. Managing this interaction implies resolving a firm's permanent struggle to overcome the barriers related to the right configuration between exploration and exploitation.

By incorporating the concept of combinative capabilities as balancing routines into the conceptualization of ambidexterity we distinguish structural, interaction, and socialization capabilities that are deployed in overcoming these barriers to resource (re)configuration.

Drawing on knowledge management and barriers to resource configuration we expect that the way organizations deploy combinative capabilities to manage the interaction between exploration and exploitation depends on the observed barriers to resource (re)configuration. By combining the constructs of barriers to resource reconfiguration, ambidexterity, and combinative capabilities we intend to gain more insight in the way organizations manage the actual interaction between exploration and exploitation. Our paper will introduce a set of propositions indicating the relationship between ambidexterity, barriers to resource (re)configuration, and combinative capabilities as balancing routines.

In this chapter, the authors examine the main effect of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) – a firm’s strategic entrepreneurial posture – on balancing exploration and exploitation in the form of organizational ambidexterity. Resource-constrained firms face an imperative to conduct innovative activities, survive hostile environments, and compete with larger and more resource-rich firms. The authors contend that firms can address these potential impediments through achieving ambidexterity via dynamic capabilities, firm-specific resources, and institutional factors. Specifically, The authors review the EO and ambidexterity literatures and summarize extant arguments related to the relationship between EO, exploration, and exploitation. The authors also discuss the most prominent scales and measures of EO, exploration, and exploitation. Moreover, the authors discuss operationalizational challenges that should be considered when conducting EO–ambidexterity research and suggest future research directions by specifying an agenda outlining useful theoretical perspectives and various contingencies that may influence the EO–ambidexterity relationship.

This paper develops a practice approach to institutional ambidexterity. In doing so, it first explores the ‘promise’ of institutional ambidexterity as a concept to address shortcomings with the treatment of complexity in institutional theory. However, we argue that this is an empty promise because ambidexterity remains an organizational level construct that neither connects to the institutional level, or to the practical actions and interactions within which individuals enact institutions. We therefore suggest a practice approach that we develop into a conceptual framework for fulfilling the promise of institutional ambidexterity. The second part of the paper outlines what a practice approach is and the variation in practice-based insights into institutional ambidexterity that we might expect in contexts of novel or routine institutional complexity. Finally, the paper concludes with a research agenda that highlights the potential of practice to extend institutional theory through new research approaches to well-established institutional theory questions, interests and established-understandings.

This paper develops a practice approach to institutional ambidexterity. In doing so, it first explores the ‘promise’ of institutional ambidexterity as a concept to address shortcomings with the treatment of complexity in institutional theory. However, we argue that this is an empty promise because ambidexterity remains an organizational level construct that neither connects to the institutional level, or to the practical actions and interactions within which individuals enact institutions. We therefore suggest a practice approach that we develop into a conceptual framework for fulfilling the promise of institutional ambidexterity. The second part of the paper outlines what a practice approach is and the variation in practice-based insights into institutional ambidexterity that we might expect in contexts of novel or routine institutional complexity. Finally, the paper concludes with a research agenda that highlights the potential of practice to extend institutional theory through new research approaches to well-established institutional theory questions, interests and established-understandings.

An important issue for medium-sized enterprises (MEs) in strategic management research is the ability to be resilient, recover and bounce back, after a disturbing and extenuating external event, such as the recent financial and economic crisis. Researchers have made efforts to understand the antecedents to resilience. Some studies propose capabilities and resources that strengthen experimentation while other researchers emphasize factors that support reliability. This study seeks to reconcile these views relying on upper echelons theory as the top management of MEs’ shape organizational attitudes and behaviors. The authors propose two antecedents in MEs related to management capabilities, ambidexterity and consistency, and the characteristics of family ownership that allow building of experimentation and reliability. We test our hypotheses on a dataset of 3,006 MEs and show how manager ambidexterity and family ownership play important roles in ME resilience.