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Organizational learning is a critical factor in generating firm innovation. While the firms are working with global business partners, not only does their absorptive learning capacity (ALC) with business partners play an important role in generating innovation from the inter-partner firm relationship, but their joint learning capacity (JLC) does as well. However, little research has simultaneously examined absorptive and JLC on innovation in global supply chain relationships. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Drawing on the knowledge-based view, inter-partner learning theory and resource dependence theory, the current study investigates the effects of two organizational learning capacities on relationship-specific innovation: ALC (firm-level) and JLC (relationship level). In addition, a firm’s focus on exploitation/exploration strategy and supplier dependence is further incorporated into the study as moderators. Moreover, solutions to endogeneity issues are discussed and reported due to the usage of survey data. The model of this study was tested using data collected from 190 electronics firms in Taiwan as an emerging market.

The findings of this research reveal that JLC in the presence of absorptive capacity positively influences relationship-specific innovation. Furthermore, the exploitation focus of a firm positively moderates the effects of both absorptive and JLC on relationship-specific innovation. However, supplier dependence negatively moderates the effect of JLC.

The research provides some theoretical implications for learning and innovation generation in global supply chains.

The paper provides some managerial implications for how to manage innovations in the global supply chain relationships.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how innovation generation can be better managed in global supply chain contexts.

This study investigates the impact of organizational ambidexterity on employee performance within Jordanian clearance companies, focusing on the mediating role of organizational learning. This research aims to explore how the dimensions of exploration and exploitation influence performance outcomes, including effectiveness and growth.

Using analytical descriptive research, this study uses SMART-PLS 4 for hypothesis testing and mediation analysis. A meticulously developed questionnaire, grounded in scholarly literature and vetted by experts, was distributed to 230 employees across the Jordanian clearance industry, achieving a 91.3% response rate.

This study found that companies do better when they effectively explore and exploit, especially if they also focus on learning and adapting. This insight is particularly useful for those in the human resource development and management fields who aim to boost employee performance and, ultimately, the success of their organizations. The findings reveal a significant indirect effect of organizational ambidexterity on performance through organizational learning. Ambidexterity explained 55.6% of the variance in organizational learning, and subsequently, organizational learning accounted for 47.4% of performance variance. The total performance variance was 81.8%, indicating a strong relationship between the constructs.

This study’s scope is limited to the Jordanian clearance industry, suggesting the need for further research across different contexts and industries. The reliance on self-reported data may introduce bias, warranting future use of mixed methods for a more comprehensive understanding.

The findings underscore the importance of fostering organizational learning as a mediator between ambidexterity and performance. Companies should invest in strategies that enhance both exploratory and exploitative activities, leveraging organizational learning to improve performance outcomes.

By highlighting the role of organizational learning in mediating the relationship between ambidexterity and performance, this research suggests pathways for businesses to contribute to economic growth and employee development within the Jordanian context and potentially beyond.

This study contributes to the field by examining the underexplored context of the Jordanian customs clearance industry and using a robust methodological framework to assess the relationship between organizational ambidexterity, learning and performance. It provides empirical evidence supporting the significant impact of balanced competency configurations on performance outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to define co-exploitation, co-exploration, and alliance ambidexterity from the perspective of organizational learning; to analyze how knowledge bases, structural arrangements, and control mechanisms of R&D alliances influence co-exploitation and co-exploration; and to discuss how to achieve alliance ambidexterity by managing paradoxes around knowledge bases, structural arrangements, and control mechanisms.

This is a conceptual paper focussing on how to balance exploitation and exploration at the alliance level through managing three paradoxes of cooperation: similarity vs complementarity, integration vs modularity, and contracts vs trust.

While technological similarity, structural integration, and contracts are more likely to promote co-exploitation, technological complementarity, structural modularity, and trust are more likely to facilitate co-exploration. Alliance ambidexterity, which is beneficial for alliance performance, derives from either the combination of technological complementarity, structural integration, and contracts, or the combination of technological similarity, structural modularity, and trust temporally.

Researchers should analyze the possibility of building alliance ambidexterity in other types of interorganizational relationships, and find other possible antecedents of interorganizational learning.

Managers should not simply treat R&D alliances as one of exploratory interorganizational relationships, but pay equal attention to co-exploitation and co-exploration. To achieve this balance, practitioners should combine technological complementarity with structural integration and contracts, or integrate technological similarity with structural modularity and trust.

This paper is one of the first contributions that analyze how an R&D alliance could gain its ambidexterity through the management of nested cooperation paradoxes.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine whether inspirational leadership of heads of specialized medical units is related to individual ambidexterity of their dependent physicians; and second, to study the possible mediating role of organizational learning capability (OLC) in the relationship between inspirational leadership and individual ambidexterity.

Structural equation modeling was used on a sample of 194 medical specialists from Spanish public hospitals.

Results show that inspirational leadership is positively related to individual ambidexterity among healthcare physicians. In addition, the results of the study revealed that the relationship between inspirational leadership and individual ambidexterity is mediated by conditions that facilitate learning, namely, OLC.

This study uses cross-sectional data, which do not guarantee causality relationships among the examined variables.

The results of this paper suggest first that heads of healthcare units should inspire followers to achieve both exploration and exploitation. Second, it is also necessary to consider that inspirational leaders promote those conditions that facilitate learning, which should be particularly taken into account to enhance both physician’s exploration and exploitation.

In stressing an evident gap in the relationship between leadership and ambidexterity at the individual level, this paper attempts to advance in the leadership literature by revealing how the action or power of moving the intellect or emotions, and enhancing enthusiasm and confidence, empowers physicians to both explore and exploit knowledge. The results also indicate that the inspiration transmitted by the heads of medical services, facilitate physician’s perceived learning conditions which, in turn, fosters their individual ambidexterity.

This study aims to analyze the moderating role of a firm’s alliance learning capability. The aim is to investigate the comparative performance of developing exploitation (or exploration) activities in collaboration with others vs adopting a go-it-alone posture.

The authors compare high levels of co-exploitation (or co-exploration) that represent the collaboration stance vs low levels of co-exploitation (or co-exploration) that characterize the go-it-alone posture. Data were collected using a sample of 262 manufacturing firms that developed exploitation-based innovations and 239 exploration-based innovations. Regression models were used to test the hypotheses.

Empirical results suggest that the best performance is reached by firms that exploit or explore collaborating with others at high levels of alliance learning capability. In contrast, firms perform better by going alone in exploitation activities at low levels of alliance learning capability.

Firms may complement internal efforts of exploitation or exploration by co-developing knowledge with other organizations for higher performance. However, collaborating with others is not free of drawbacks, and, under certain circumstances, the go-it-alone strategy is more convenient.

This paper provides evidence of the role of a firm’s alliance learning capability in determining the differential performance of carrying on exploitation or exploration activities in collaboration with others vs adopting a go-it-alone stance. Thus, it offers an alternative perspective in the literature on organizational learning and innovation management, in contrast with the exploitation and exploration balanced perspective of ambidexterity, by explaining how alliance learning capability fosters firm performance combining exploitation or exploration at organizational and inter-organizational levels.

The central concern of organizational learning and corporate strategy has, in recent decades, focused on the rational choice and appropriate balance between exploration and exploitation. Dividing mergers and acquisitions (M&As) into related and unrelated M&As, this study applies the exploration vs exploitation construct to examine how different M&A strategies affect exploration and exploitation of the combined firm, how post-acquisition integration affects exploration and exploitation of the combined firm, and how organizational ambidexterity affects post-acquisition performance. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Organizational and industry level data were drawn from the top 1,000 Taiwanese electronic and computer firms reported by 2009 China Credit Information Service, an authorized credit-rating company in Taiwan. The companies are classified into four industries: computer and associated equipments manufacturing (SICs 271x, 274x, 276x); integrated circuits (SIC 261x), opto-electronics and telecommunication (SICs 264x, 272x, 277x) and electronic components (SICs 262x, 263x, 264x, 269x, 275x). Questionnaires were distributed to general managers of the top 1,000 electronics companies.

This investigation of Taiwanese electronic and computer firms revealed that related acquisitions with high degrees of acquisition integration positively affect the combined firm's exploitation; unrelated acquisitions with high degrees of R&D expenditure and acquisition experience positively affect the combined firm's exploration. The firm's ability of simultaneously pursuing exploitation and exploration positively affects its post-acquisition performance.

The contribution of this study is to understand how acquisitions influence exploitation and exploration. With regard to the relationship between acquisition and exploitation/exploration, this study finds that unrelated acquisitions enhance exploration, whereas related acquisitions enhance exploitation.

Managerial ties (i.e. business ties and political ties) could help manufacturers conduct learning ambidexterity by providing external resources. However, the resource management perspective claims that merely accessing external resources does not guarantee learning ambidexterity. As manufacturers utilize their resources by implementing services, this study aims to investigate how the impact of managerial ties on learning ambidexterity depends on human resource service practices (i.e. manager service support and employee service rewards).

This study collected data from 150 high-tech manufacturing firms through a survey-based questionnaire, which was completed by two managers in one firm. The ordinary least squares regression was employed to test the research model and hypotheses.

Business ties hurt learning ambidexterity when manager service support is high, whereas business ties benefit learning ambidexterity when employee service rewards are high. Similar findings are not applied to political ties.

The authors did not examine the mechanism underlying the effect of managerial ties on learning ambidexterity. The non-significant findings on political ties suggest potential mediators for future research. Another limitation is that the study’s data are only from China. Manager ties are also important in other developing countries like Turkey. More data from other countries are needed to test the generalization of the authors’ findings.

First, managers should focus on business ties more than political ties when learning ambidexterity is important to their firms. Second, managers should reward service-oriented employees.

The study enriches the literature on investigating the impact of managerial ties on learning ambidexterity. The authors also contribute to the literature by examining servitization as a service context. Prior studies mainly examine servitization as a driver of firm performance. The findings suggest that servitization as a business context can affect other business activities.

The purpose of this paper is to study the possible mediating mechanisms (human resource management (HRM), learning and innovation) that could exist in the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational performance. This topic has been studied only by a few groups of researchers and these researchers have not analyzed all these concepts jointly.

This research explores the relationships using partial least squares with data from 200 Spanish industrial companies. Analyzing the mentioned relationships in the Spanish context has been done by few researchers before.

The study reveals that the adoption of transformational leadership styles improves performance when specific systems of HRM practices, learning and innovation are developed in an organization.

This study, therefore, contributes to the understanding of the link between transformational leaders and performance by proposing a model in which it is evinced that this leadership style produces synergies between HRM, learning and innovation, which in the end, affect performance.

The paper investigates the relationships among learning orientation (LO), market orientation (MO), human resource practices (HRPs) and innovation and their association with organisational performance. The aim is to show that HRPs and innovation are important mechanisms for transmitting the benefit of LO and MO into performance outcomes.

Building on extensive literature, a model of the relationships is developed and empirically tested using survey data collected from 220 businesses. Data are analysed through structural equation modelling and/or path modelling. The primary aim is to assess direct, indirect and total effects of LO and MO on performance outcomes through HRPs and innovation (conceptualised as administrative, process and product innovation) as mediators. The study carefully traces the effects of each variable to distinguish between indirect effects and mediated effects.

HRPs are a major mechanism for transmitting the benefits of LO and MO. In some models this is even more important than innovation. The results also suggest that LO should be viewed as exploration while MO is the interface between exploration and exploitation and, finally, HRPs and innovation must be viewed as exploitation or implementation issues.

The study suggests that marketers should include HRPs in models of LO, MO, and innovation to enhance the explanations of these to organisational performance. This study suggests HRPs and innovation are important mediators.

The paper suggests that marketers need to consider the impact of HRPs on achievement of marketing goals and organisational performance.

This study aims to extend the proposal of Holmqvist with regard to organisational processes of learning and their impact on firm performance.

Based on a survey of 187 firms, the paper shows that certain organisational processes of learning are related to innovation performance. Further, it investigates the moderating role of product radicalness on such relationships.

Based on a survey of 187 firms, the paper shows that certain organisational processes of learning are related to innovation performance. Further, it investigates the moderating role of product radicalness on such relationships and proves that the other two types of organisational learning processes are not related to innovation performance.

The innovation performance of collaboration between firms has not received a great deal of attention in the literature. This research paper offers some guidelines on how to obtain great advantages from this collaboration.