Search results

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the relationship between three types of process innovations (i.e. innovation in production, IT, and logistics processes) and ambidexterity performance. Specifically, the paper attempts to examine whether changes in business processes help companies to reconcile exploration and exploitation learning activities within the firm domain.

This research is based on data of 2,843 manufacturing firms, whose data are available from the Italian Innovation Survey (period 2010-2012). Hypotheses are developed and tested by using a Tobit regression approach.

Innovation in production and IT processes favors ambidexterity performance, whereas changes in logistics activities, despite being positive, are less relevant.

This is one of the first attempts to offer empirical evidence about the relationship between process innovations and ambidexterity performance (without engaging in domain separation), hence providing additional insights into the ambidexterity literature and the literature on process innovation.

Firm ambidexterity usually has been discussed as a top-down planned strategic choice. The purpose of this paper is to showcase it is not always so; it may also be emergent as well – but how?

The author used an in-depth, qualitative, multiple case research method for this study, and chose four cases from different industry domains for this study.

The author identified that being ambidextrous is not always planned – it may also be emergent. The emergent-strategy process of organizational ambidexterity gets initiated through ambidextrous orientation and abilities of the top management team (TMT), and their actions and behaviors influence the evolution of supporting context that promotes exploration and exploitation behavior of employees at multiple levels of hierarchy, and across different units and functions of the organization.

This study contributes to the discussions in organizational ambidexterity, deliberate-emergent strategy debate and the role of TMTs in setting the strategic path of the organization.

Attaining and sustaining firm ambidexterity is a managerial challenge. This challenge is addressable, by having ambidextrous TMTs – team members with complementary competencies of exploration and exploitation, with proper coordination within team members, and relatively balanced power sharing among the team members. Such a team at the top of the organization and their signaling builds the context to support increased exploration and exploitation activities at multiple levels of the organization.

This study showcases the emergent process of firm ambidexterity. Very few studies so far have discussed this process of becoming ambidextrous.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the implementation of an ambidexterity strategy in a large Italian Company that works in the energy field. The aim of the study is to understand how contextual ambidexterity has been achieved during a business process management (BPM) approach by describing the main variables that interacted during the project implementation.

The authors based their study both on primary (direct observation and interviews) and secondary (company manuals, books and procedures) qualitative investigations of BPM approach based on three business process re-engineering (BPR) projects and nine total quality management (TQM) projects, focused on change team behaviors, dynamics and dialogues.

The authors observed that the implementation of simultaneously radical and incremental change projects has been influenced by the exploration and exploitation activities related to every single TQM and BPR project considered. The findings suggest that the overall project has been influenced by four main underlying variables, which are task specialization and systems interoperability (knowledge transfer), identity and leadership (knowledge conversion) and two output variables (ambiguity and feedback to change), that, by interacting, enable ambidexterity.

BPM is an important option to consider within the ambidexterity theory, being conceptually conceived as an approach in which TQM and BPR actually complement each other. Moreover, the results contextualize the importance of the change management team (CMT) to manage the connections between knowledge creation and refinement, and vice versa, depending particularly on the knowledge conversion process enabled by a flexible team culture. The focus of the study is mainly at the BPR and TQM project level. The authors consider structural ambidexterity and its enabling mechanisms as the framework in which BPM is implemented. Moreover, research limitations are related both to the specificity of the context, a large, highly specialized and mechanistic company and to the qualitative approach that may reduce the generalization of the empirical results.

Managers need to be cognizant and aware both of the BPM techniques, in order to sustain ambidexterity, and of ambiguity and change feedback as variables that enable the effective connection of the different steps of innovation or refinement strategy and, therefore, of ambidexterity. Moreover, the contextual factors such as leadership and people identity should be considered and managed as important variables related to change.

The originality of this paper is related to improving the understanding of how to implement the theoretical concept of ambidexterity in a real world organization, by providing new evidence that highlights the importance of contextual ambidexterity within a structural ambidexterity strategy during a BPM project.

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.

This study aims to extend ambidexterity theory from the perspective of organisational learning and examine how process ambidexterity, which comprises operational flexibility and operational routine, responds to environmental uncertainty and ultimately reduces organisational risks.

This study tests the hypotheses by analysing 464 annual reports of 115 listed companies in the Chinese agricultural and food industry using content and secondary data analyses. Four case studies are also provided.

The results show that (1) environmental uncertainty has a positive effect on either operational flexibility or operational routine; (2) both operational flexibility and operational routine have negative effects on organisational risks, supporting the view that process ambidexterity mediates the relationship between environmental uncertainty and organisational risks; and (3) organisational slack plays the role of “double-edged sword” by negatively moderating the effect of environmental uncertainty on operational flexibility and positively moderating the effect of environmental uncertainty on operational routine.

In an uncertain environment, companies are exposed to greater risk. This study contributes to risk management in three ways: first, it extends ambidexterity theory to process management and proposes how process ambidexterity balances operational flexibility and routines. Second, it distinguishes between the different conditions under which flexibility or routines are superior. Third, it explains the mechanisms related to how organisations can resolve environmental uncertainty into risk through process ambidexterity.

Past studies have associated top management’s paradoxical cognition and actions with the ambidextrous performance of firms. Compared to large firms, the top management members of small firms play a focal role in resolving the paradoxical tensions of explorative and exploitative innovation strategies. Anchored in the upper echelons perspective, the purpose of this paper is to explore the influences of two top management team (TMT) processes on organizational ambidexterity: TMT behavioral integration and TMT involvement in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The research is set in the context of 78 hi-tech SMEs across IT, biotech, and electronics industry. Multiple responses were collected from each firm. The authors used hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses.

The findings from this paper demonstrate that the process of TMT behavioral integration enhances organizational ambidexterity. However, the results show that neither the top management’s involvement, nor the interaction of the top management’s involvement with the behavioral integration of a TMT, enhances organizational ambidexterity.

The limited examination of two TMT processes has restricted the scope of this paper. The study has also been unable to measure paradoxical cognition in the TMT objectively and without proxy measures.

The results from this study add to the existing literature on paradoxical cognition, ambidexterity, and behavioral integration. The results from this study also lend support to the upper echelons perspective. Further, the findings from this paper present significant practical implications by throwing light on the senior team processes necessary for small ambidextrous firms in emerging economies. The volatile and rather unpredictable nature of emerging economies underscore the relevance of examining the facilitating conditions of small ambidextrous firms in these countries.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal how organizational learning at the strategic and operational levels (i.e. strategic learning and business learning, respectively) contribute to the development of organizational ambidexterity along the growth of enterprises from an evolutionary view.

The authors conducted a longitudinal single case study on Huawei – a leading Chinese firm in the telecommunication industry. Data were collected from various sources including interviews, senior speeches, scholarly publications, company magazines and other documents, and was analyzed in line with the principles of grounded theory.

This research reveals that the case company (Huawei) constructed organizational ambidexterity with different foci during different development stages. The organization’s ambidextrous capability evolves over time, shifting from one domain to another. Such ambidexterity development was largely beneficial from the multilevel organizational learning at both the strategic level (focussing on the whole organization and long-term goals) and operational level (focussing on local interests and short-term goals).

This paper represents one of the earliest works to uncover the ambidexterity building process from an evolutionary approach that requires the collection of longitudinal data. Also, the paper proposes a multi-level learning framework for ambidexterity building in practice. This framework distinguishes strategic learning from business learning and projects the two types of learning into learning at four levels-individual, team, intra-organizational, and inter-organizational, which can be leveraged to guide division of labor among hierarchical levels during the progressive development of ambidexterity.

The objective of the present research is to explore how firms, when engaged in collaborative new product development (NPD) activities, may be understood to be successful or unsuccessful in achieving ambidextrous processes. The study explores the organizational and managerial practices inside the firm and in the supply chain that enable or constrain the firm in reaching a balance between exploitation and exploration when engaged with NPD.

A case study approach was adopted with the ambition to develop new theoretical insight. Insights from multiple NPD projects in a single highly innovative firm were collected and coded.

The analysis shows how the organization of the NPD projects, alignment strategies, approaches to reward structure, supplier integration willingness and absorptive capacity were all formative in the firms' abilities to achieve ambidexterity in the NPD processes.

The presented research expands knowledge of how ambidextrous NPD processes can be reached. It demonstrates how a complex combination of factors and practices internal to the firm and concerning its supplier management strategies and practices enables or constrains ambidexterity in NPD processes. The results allow managers to devise more informed strategies and design decisions to enable NPD processes that reach adequate and simultaneous concerns for exploitation and exploration.

Considering the inconclusive results in the literature on the way organizations create ambidextrous organizational capabilities, the purpose of this paper is to present an alternative theoretical model of three different paths through which ambidexterity is built. From a multilevel perspective, the model describes how specific combinations of the facets of intellectual capital – human, social and organizational capital – can synergistically work to reach ambidexterity.

The study is based on main arguments from multilevel and intellectual capital literature. The multilevel approach allows the authors to consider a broader perspective to define three specific modes to create ambidextrous capabilities. Additionally, the intellectual capital literature completes the model, with the input (human capital), mechanisms (social capital) and the infrastructure (organizational capital) needed to develop ambidexterity. With the integration of both frameworks, the model explains how different types of ambidexterity are generated at diverse firm levels – individual, group and organizational, following different and complementary paths.

This research goes beyond the traditional arguments on how organizations develop simultaneously exploration and exploitation activities, proposing an integrative model of three complementary modes: path 1 (ambidexterity based on individual human capital); path 2 (ambidexterity through social capital) and path 3 (ambidexterity through organizational capital). These paths link organizational levels in organizations, showing the accumulative process of ambidexterity from a multilevel perspective.

The paper offers an alternative view expanding the ongoing discussion in the ambidexterity field. There is a lack of configurational models in the literature that describe, from a synergistic point of view, these complementary paths to achieving organizational ambidexterity. This approach contributes to explaining that not only individual ambidextrous human capital is needed to generate organizational ambidexterity, but also that specialist human capital could be a source of ambidexterity.

Big pharma, which comprise the most important companies in the pharmaceutical sector, are ambidextrous organizations by nature. Big data can heavily influence this characteristic by simultaneously requiring adequate business process management. In fact, the impact of big data on business process management can assist big pharma in increasing process efficiency (which is related to the research and development pipeline) and process efficacy (related to product portfolio management). The purpose of this paper is to investigate this possibility and opportunity.

In the absence of specific scientific studies, as indicated by a review of the existing literature, the authors have adopted a grounded theory approach. This research has observed multiple cases (the 15 most important big pharma companies worldwide) through an electronic survey conducted on secondary data. The study has allowed the generation of a theoretical framework based on the (direct) relationship between knowledge process standardization (as the dependent variable) and big data (as the independent variable) in organizations oriented toward ambidexterity, such as big pharma in the specific scope of this research.

As big data utilization becomes widespread along the pipeline (or even along the value chain/supply chain), business process management increasingly uses (or tends to use) standardization, adopting process standardization as the main coordination mechanism to manage big knowledge. This theory is even more true when considering the moderating role of ambidexterity. An enterprise oriented toward structural ambidexterity (such as big pharma) that uses big data will require increased process standardization to manage big knowledge. Alternatively, an enterprise oriented toward contextual ambidexterity that uses big data will require increased output standardization.

Based on an analytical literature review, no research to date has focused strict attention on the influence that big data can have on business process management to improve the natural ambidexterity of big pharma. The main unique feature of this research relies on this point. The main value of the research originates from the theoretical framework reconstructed by grounded theory, which constitutes a powerful strategic tool to support executives and managers of big pharma in organizing business process management for their ambidextrous organizations using big data.