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The ambidextrous leadership model specifically describes opening and closing leader behaviors in the innovation process. This paper aims to emphasize the relevance of the ambidextrous leadership model with respect to leadership in innovation processes.

In this longitudinal research design, 54 employees rated the ambidextrous leader behaviors and innovation performance concerning an innovation project over a period of six weeks. Traditional leadership styles (i.e. transformational, transactional, instrumental leadership, leader–member exchange) were assessed at a between-person level to identify their effects with respect to innovation performance.

Multilevel regression analysis results showed that instrumental leadership as well as opening and closing leader behaviors were positively related to innovation performance. By contrast, transformational and transactional leadership as well as leader–member exchange (LMX) did not show significant associations with innovation performance.

The findings support the relevance of specific leader behaviors to the innovation process and therefore underline the importance of the ambidextrous leadership model.

The purpose of this paper is to report the first empirical test of the recently proposed ambidexterity theory of leadership for innovation (Rosing et al., 2011). This theory proposes that the interaction between two complementary leadership behaviors – opening and closing – predicts team innovation, such that team innovation is highest when both opening and closing leadership behaviors are high.

Multi-source survey data came from 33 team leaders of architectural and interior design firms and 90 of their employees.

Results supported the interaction hypothesis, even after controlling for leaders’ transformational leadership behavior and general team success.

The relatively small sample size and the cross-sectional design are potential limitations of the study. The findings provide initial support for the central hypothesis of the ambidexterity theory of leadership for innovation.

The results suggest that organizations could train team leaders’ ambidextrous leadership behaviors to increase team innovation.

Identifying ways to facilitate organizational innovation is important, as it contributes to employment and company growth as well as individual and societal well-being.

This multi-source study contributes to the literatures on leadership and innovation in organizations by showing that ambidextrous leadership behaviors predict team innovation above and beyond transformational leadership behavior.

Taking a process perspective, the authors observed that some improvisations lead to altered patterns in organizational routines, while other improvisations fade. Key to this discovery is the concept of routine paths, which suggests that improvisation can play a significant role in routine dynamics over time, particularly in relation to organizational change. Examining improvisation before, during, and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our longitudinal study traces the uptake of the Chinese social media platform WeChat at an Australian university. Staff improvised discreetly with WeChat to enact their communication routines in the years leading up to 2020 and then improvised openly after the onset of the crisis. The study explains how improvisation drove some situated actions to expand paths and led to patterning, which gradually redefined and reorganized how the university communicated with its students from China.

Our understanding of what we call “normal” in organizations has been shaken multiple times in recent years. As change is perceived as an inherent feature of routine dynamics, it is relevant to understand how change becomes established as a new normal. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore how change in routines takes hold as normality forms. To answer this question, the author studies the change in routines in an in-depth process case study of a higher education organization during the COVID-19 pandemic transforming its teaching model. The author’s findings show that normality formation is a dynamic process. While normality can be described as a snapshot of the current state of what is considered normal at one point in time, normality transforms in sequential waves making the overall process of normality formation pulsate. In drawing out six patterning mechanisms, the author introduces a pulsating normality as the transformative evolution of what is considered normal. This study speaks to routine dynamics literature, contributing to a better understanding of how a variation in performance becomes patterned as a sustained part of a routine.