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Networks and learning matter to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Networks and learning are also further elaborations on the exploration–exploitation (EE) dilemma. Ambidexterity, that is, managing this apparent dilemma, can be difficult as a result of many constraints. One of these constraints is that of mutually exclusive network structures. Consequently, ambidexterity is the ability to change networks, depending on need using mixed data on four small companies formed as part of an undergraduate management class, I hypothesize how specific network properties of the advice-seeking relationship, including density, cohesion, centralization, and embeddedness, affect two outcomes. Specifically, early exploratory learning is proposed to be positively affected by less-dense networks that maintain cohesion without centralization and do not have relations embedded in other relations. In contrast, later exploitative learning should be associated with denser networks that also have higher cohesion, higher centralization, and greater embeddedness. The results provide some support for these hypotheses and suggest further research in two areas that will benefit SMEs. One, how do early networks affect learning mode? Two, how does the ability to rewire networks provide the relational infrastructure to shift from exploration to exploitation – that is, to be ambidextrous in the face of the exploration–exploitation tradeoff?

This chapter focuses on how corporate entrepreneurs seize opportunities and deal with threats through resource acquisition, control, and use. When corporate entrepreneurs fail to gain control of preferred resources they must rely on their ability to optimize their use of resources on hand in order to avoid the typical limitations inherent in a constrained set of resources. However, control of resources, whether existing or supplementary, by itself is an insufficient basis for influencing performance. Performance also depends on an organization’s capacity to deploy resources in combination with strategically important organizational processes to affect a desired end. The way in which corporate entrepreneurs utilize their resources is likely to have a more significant effect on performance than is merely having control of them. The current research aims to elaborate on how corporate entrepreneurs can become more resourceful by using a vacillation approach to resource acquisition and utilization. In this context, vacillation is movement between exploration and exploitation, or knowledge acquisition and knowledge integration from a knowledge management perspective. Vacillation is distinguished from the “balance” hypothesis prevalent in the organizational ambidexterity literature. A balance hypothesis states that both exploration and exploitation may be pursued simultaneously either by creating structural or contextual organizational ambidexterity. Here, we explain how vacillation enables an organization’s corporate entrepreneurship posture to lead to improved performance. In this chapter, we first describe the extant literature and construct relationships between corporate entrepreneurship posture, organizational resource level, vacillation, and organizational performance. We then analyze the learning processes associated with vacillation and discuss the research and managerial implications associated with the proposed relationships.

This research aims to investigate the process of value creation, value delivery, and value capture in project-based companies. Most previous research focused on companies that operate regularly and offer manufactured products or services. This research used companies in the field of information technology that developed software to explain how value creation, value delivery, and value capture occurred. A case study with qualitative research was applied to analyze between cases. Empirical findings showed that companies carry out six activities to ensure that value creation, value delivery, and value capture can be realized in the software development process. The six activities were iterative and not a rigid sequence. This research was limited to the software industry, and further research can test the results of this study by using a survey to increase the generalizability theory developed in this study.

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.

Since March (1991) presented his ideas on organizational learning, hundreds of empirical tests have been conducted on relationships among the activities of exploration, exploitation, ambidexterity, and firm performance. Despite continued interest in his ideas, there has not been a systematic assessment of extant research to reveal whether, and to what extent, these activities relate to firm performance. This study uses meta-analysis to take a next step by aggregating results of 117 studies from more than 21,000 firms. I find strong performance effects for exploration and exploitation, but contrary to received theory, I discover ambidexterity yields weaker effects than a focus on either exploration or exploitation. Thus, I leverage these findings to offer future research opportunities.

Due to the global labor market challenges, international companies react and adjust fast to these circumstances by implementing digital solutions into all business processes. Organizational ambidexterity is seen as the response of digital transformation and it can be divided into structural, contextual, and sequential dimensions. In this context, organizations representing the smart industry will need employees with specific competencies which let them meet technological challenges.

This chapter aims to clarify the state of opinion on expectations towards, and preparedness for, the impact of Industry 4.0 on human resources management and the implementation of various types of ambidexterity in these companies. We have conducted interviews with key HR informants from manufacturing companies operating in Germany and Poland. We have found that Industry 4.0 has a significant impact on HR practices. In both international companies, various digital solutions in employee recruitment, development, and performance, have been implemented. There have also been mature examples in both companies of structural, contextual, and sequential ambidexterity.

Portfolios of temporary organisations, particularly portfolios of R&D projects with different project partners, are a common yet understudied phenomenon. We know that these portfolios suffer from tensions inherent in project portfolio ambidexterity (e.g. portfolios balancing R&D projects with new and recurrent partners), yet our understanding of what might lessen these tensions remains limited. This study introduces the idea of project portfolio maturity and theorises how it can mitigate the negative effects of ambidextrous project portfolios. We test our hypotheses by combining proprietary survey and archival data on 136 R&D project portfolios in the German biotechnology industry covering project partnerships with both new and recurrent partners. Our results show that ambidextrous project portfolios hamper firm performance and that portfolio maturity mitigates these negative effects. By introducing a new perspective on project portfolios that accounts for overlooked temporal dimensions, this study provides a new contingency that has the potential to ease the tensions that result from projects with new and recurrent partners. We thereby add to the literatures on temporary organising, project portfolios, and ambidexterity.

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.

The authors examine how firms can achieve organizational ambidexterity, that is, how they can successfully engage in concurrent exploitation of existing competencies and exploration of new competencies in their search for new products. Existing research has identified three enablers to manage these fundamentally different activities: temporal separation, structural separation, and the creation of context. Studying the strategic orientation, organization design, and performance of a unique sample of mid-sized German manufacturing firms, the authors find that the controlled interplay of decentralized decision making and formalized processes and goals is another effective means to manage the challenges of pursuing an innovation strategy balancing both exploitative and exploratory activities. The findings of this study suggest that this balanced control constitutes a fourth enabler of ambidexterity.

Creativity and innovation have been buzzwords of managerial discourse over the last few decades as they contribute to the long-term survival and competitiveness of firms. Given the non-linear, causally ambiguous, and intangible nature of all innovation-related phenomena, management scholars have been trying to uncover factors that contribute to creativity and innovation from multiple lenses ranging from organizational behavior at the micro-level to strategic management at the macro-level. Along with important and insightful developments in these research streams that evolved independently from one another, human resource management (HRM) research – especially from a strategic perspective – has only recently started to contribute to a better understanding of both creativity and innovation. The goal of this chapter is to review the contributions of strategic HRM research to an improved understanding of creativity at the individual-level and innovation at the firm-level. In organizing this review, the authors rely on the open innovation funnel as a metaphor to review research on both HRM practices and HRM systems that contribute to creativity and innovation. In the last section, the authors focus on more recent developments in HRM research that focus on ambidexterity – as a way for HRM to simultaneously facilitate exploration and exploitation. This chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions.