Ambidextrous leadership

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Ambidextrous leadership is a recently introduced term by scholars [1] to characterize a special approach to leadership that is mostly used in organizations. [2] It refers to the simultaneous use of explorative and exploitative activities by leaders. Exploration refers to search, risk taking, experimentation, and innovation in organizations, whereas exploitation has to do with refinement, efficiency, implementation, and execution. [3] Successful ambidextrous leaders must be able to achieve the appropriate mix of explorative and exploitative activities, unique for each organization, that will lead them to high firm performance outcomes. [4]

Contents

Ambidextrous leadership at multiple levels

Within the context of an organization, efficient management of ambidexterity is needed at all hierarchical levels. [5] Scholars, however, emphasize that organizational ambidexterity and ambidextrous leadership are two different concepts not necessarily related. According to researchers, different organizational levels may need different behaviors on behalf of individuals to manage ambidexterity, [6] [7] as ambidexterity management is important in a different degree for each level. If, however, leaders manage to achieve the proper balance of explorative and exploitative activities at their level, then ambidexterity may effectively penetrate at the lower levels of their organization. [5]

Ambidextrous leadership on the micro-level

On the individual level of analysis, scholars have mostly used paradox theory to explain how individuals manage the competing demands of exploration and exploitation. [8] [9] Paradoxical leadership refers to seemingly competing, yet interrelated behaviors to meet structural and follower demands simultaneously and over time. [10] Managing complex business models effectively depends on leadership that can make dynamic decisions, build commitment to specific visions and goals, learn actively at multiple levels, and engage conflict. [11]

On the group level of analysis, scholars have examined how team members affect leadership actions in the promotion of ambidexterity. Many researchers have focused their attention on the heterogeneity of both board of directors and top management teams. Research has shown that when the functional background heterogeneity of boards of directors is included into the strategy-making, then their knowledge resources can contribute to the relative exploration orientation of an organization [12] [13] In the same vein, top management teams heterogeneity moderates the impact of the internal and external advice seeking on the exploratory innovation. [14]

Ambidextrous leadership on the macro-level

The roles and behaviors of effective top managers differ considerably from those of middle managers. [15] [16] This can be attributed to the fact that middle managers have different priorities from senior executives [17] When ambidexterity penetrates across level, explorative and exploitative knowledge sharing of middle managers is especially important for the long-term firm performance. [18] For example, top-down knowledge inflows of managers from the higher hierarchical levels positively relate to middle managers' exploitative activities, while bottom-up and horizontal knowledge inflows from lower levels and peers positively relate to their explorative activities. [7]

On the employee level of analysis, both psychological factors and paradoxical leadership of group managers predict employees’ ambidextrous behavior. [19] For instance, ex-ante incentives (incentives based on past performance) and ex-post incentives (incentives based on future performance) affect productivity, motivation, and performance of employees, while making them feel the sense of stretch essential in building an ambidextrous organization. [20]

Ambidextrous leadership from a multi-level perspective

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From a multi-level perspective, many scholars have used the concept of strategic leadership to explain ambidexterity management. Strategic leadership extends the upper echelons theory and includes chief executive officers, board of directors and top management teams. This concept includes both the micro- and the macro- perspectives of leadership behaviors. [21] On the micro-level, researchers have used transformational and transactional leadership styles, [22] while on the macro-level, they have included specific moderators, such as organizational size, structure, strategy, and external environment. [5] [23] Some scholars have also used a multi-dimensional construct of dynamic capabilities to explain ambidexterity management and long-term firm performance, [24] as well as short-term and long-term tensions within the context of the temporal ambidexterity. [25]

As researchers explain, transformational leadership behaviors are needed for exploration. They refer to a set of leaders’ roles or behaviors that influence, encourage, support and guide followers to think differently, experiment and innovate, think independently, creatively and out of the box, challenge the status quo and the existing mindsets. On the contrary, transactional leadership behaviors are required for exploitation. This includes objective setting, sticking to plans, monitoring and controlling adherence to rules by the followers, supervising cost reductions, taking corrective actions, and establishing procedures and routines. Leaders’ ambidexterity management has to do with the simultaneous use of these two contradictory yet complementary leadership styles. [23]

Related Research Articles

Management Coordinating the efforts of people

Management is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a not-for-profit organization, or government body.

Intellectual capital is the intangible value of a business, covering the competencies of its people, the value relating to its relationships, and everything that is left when the employees go home, of which intellectual property (IP) is but one component. It is the sum of everything everybody in a company knows that gives it a competitive edge. The term is used in academia in an attempt to account for the value of intangible assets not listed explicitly on a company's balance sheets. However, what managers understand as intellectual capital within their organizations is not always that evident On a national level intellectual capital refers to national intangible capital (NIC).
A second meaning that is used in academia and was adopted in large corporations is focused on the recycling of knowledge via knowledge management and intellectual capital management (ICM). Creating, shaping and updating the stock of intellectual capital requires the formulation of a strategic vision, which blends together all three dimensions of intellectual capital within the organisational context through exploration, exploitation, measurement, and disclosure. Intellectual capital is used in the context of assessing the wealth of organizations. A metric for the value of intellectual capital is the amount by which the enterprise value of a firm exceeds the value of its tangible assets. Directly visible on corporate books is capital embodied in its physical assets and financial capital; however all three make up the value of an enterprise. Measuring the real value and the total performance of intellectual capital's components is a critical part of running a company in the knowledge economy and Information Age. Understanding the intellectual capital in an enterprise allows leveraging of its intellectual assets. For a corporation, the result will optimize its stock price.

Knowledge management (KM) is the process of creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making the best use of knowledge.

Organizational learning is the process of creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge within an organization. An organization improves over time as it gains experience. From this experience, it is able to create knowledge. This knowledge is broad, covering any topic that could better an organization. Examples may include ways to increase production efficiency or to develop beneficial investor relations. Knowledge is created at four different units: individual, group, organizational, and inter organizational.

Historically there have been differences among investigators regarding the definition of organizational culture. Edgar H. Schein, a leading researcher in this field, defined organizational culture as comprising a number of features, including a shared "pattern of basic assumptions" group members have acquired over time as they learn to successfully cope with internal and external organizationally relevant problems. Elliott Jaques first introduced the concept of culture in the organizational context in his 1951 book The Changing Culture of a Factory. The book was a published report of "a case study of developments in the social life of one industrial community between April, 1948 and November 1950". The "case" involved a publicly-held British company engaged principally in the manufacture, sale, and servicing of metal bearings. The study concerned itself with the description, analysis, and development of corporate group behaviours.

Transactional leadership or transactional management is the part of one style of leadership that focuses on supervision, organization, or performance; it is an integral part of the Full Range Leadership Model. Transactional leadership is a style of leadership in which leaders promote compliance by followers through both rewards and punishments. Through a rewards and punishments system, transactional leaders are able to keep followers motivated for the short-term. Unlike transformational leaders, those using the transactional approach are not necessarily looking to change the future. Transactional leadership "occurs when one person takes the initiative in making contact with others for the purpose of an exchange of valued things".

Complexity theory and organizations, also called complexity strategy or complex adaptive organizations, is the use of the study of complexity systems in the field of strategic management and organizational studies. It draws from research in the natural sciences that examines uncertainty and non-linearity. Complexity theory emphasizes interactions and the accompanying feedback loops that constantly change systems. While it proposes that systems are unpredictable, they are also constrained by order-generating rules.

Computer simulation is a prominent method in organizational studies and strategic management. While there are many uses for computer simulation, most academics in the fields of strategic management and organizational studies have used computer simulation to understand how organizations or firms operate. More recently, however, researchers have also started to apply computer simulation to understand organizational behaviour at a more micro-level, focusing on individual and interpersonal cognition and behavior such as team working.

In organizational theory, dynamic capability is the capability of an organization to purposefully adapt an organization's resource base. The concept was defined by David Teece, Gary Pisano and Amy Shuen, in their 1997 paper Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management, as "the firm’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments".

Change management is a collective term for all approaches to prepare, support, and help individuals, teams, and organizations in making organizational change. Drivers of change may include the ongoing evolution of technology, internal reviews of processes, crisis response, customer demand changes, competitive pressure, acquisitions and mergers, and organizational restructuring. It includes methods that redirect or redefine the use of resources, business process, budget allocations, or other modes of operation that significantly change a company or organization. Organizational change management (OCM) considers the full organization and what needs to change, while change management may be used solely to refer to how people and teams are affected by such organizational transition. It deals with many different disciplines, from behavioral and social sciences to information technology and business solutions.


Competitive heterogeneity is a concept from strategic management that examines why industries do not converge on one best way of doing things. In the view of strategic management scholars, the microeconomics of production and competition combine to predict that industries will be composed of identical firms offering identical products at identical prices. Deeper analyses of this topic were taken up in industrial organization economics by crossover economics/strategic-management scholars such as Harold Demsetz and Michael Porter. Demsetz argued that better-managed firms would make better products than their competitors. Such firms would translate better products or lower prices into higher levels of demand, which would lead to revenue growth. These firms would then be larger than the more poorly managed competitors. Porter argued that firms in an industry would cluster into strategic groups. Each group would be similar and movement between groups would be difficult and costly. Richard Rumelt and Stephen Lippman demonstrated how firms could differ in an industry in partial equilibrium-like circumstances. Richard Nelson and Sidney G. Winter discussed how firms develop differing capabilities. During this time, industrial economics focused on industry characteristics, treated the differences among firms in an industry as trivial. This was a point of contention within strategy and between strategy and economics from about 1980 to the mid-1990s.

Max Henri Boisot was a British architect and management consultant who was professor of Strategic Management at the ESADE business school in Barcelona. known for his ideas about the information economy, the Information Space, social capital and social learning theory.

Organizational ambidexterity refers to an organization's ability to be efficient in its management of today's business and also adaptable for coping with tomorrow's changing demand. Just as being ambidextrous means being able to use both the left and right hand equally, organizational ambidexterity requires the organizations to use both exploration and exploitation techniques to be successful.

The success trap refers to business organizations that focus on the exploitation of their current business activities and as such neglect the need to explore new territory and enhance their long-term viability.

Innovation leadership is a philosophy and technique that combines different leadership styles to influence employees to produce creative ideas, products, and services. The key role in the practice of innovation leadership is the innovation leader. Dr. David Gliddon (2006) developed the competency model of innovation leaders and established the concept of innovation leadership at Penn State University.

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Information culture

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References

  1. ↑ Rosing, K., Frese, M., & Bausch, A. (2011). Explaining the heterogeneity of the leadership-innovation relationship: Ambidextrous leadership. The Leadership Quarterly. 22(5), 956–974.
  2. ↑ Kassotaki, O. (2019a). Ambidextrous leadership in high technology organizations. Organizational Dynamics, 48(2), 37-42.
  3. ↑ March, J. G. (1991). Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization Science, 2 (1), 71-87.
  4. ↑ Raisch, S. & Birkinshaw, J. (2008). Organizational ambidexterity: Antecedents, outcomes and moderators.Journal of Management", 34(3), 375-409.
  5. 1 2 3 Kassotaki et al. (2019). Ambidexterity penetration across organizational levels in an aerospace and defense organization. Long Range Planning, 52 (3), 366-385.
  6. ↑ Lubatkin, M. H., Simsek, Z., Ling, Y., & Veiga, J. (2006). Ambidexterity and performance in small- to medium-sized firms: The pivotal role of top management team behavioral integration. Journal of Management. 32(5), 646–672.
  7. 1 2 Mom, T., Van Den Bosch, F., & Volberda, H. (2007). Investigating managers’ exploration and exploitation activities: The influence of top-down, bottom-up and horizontal knowledge inflows. Journal of Management Studies. 44(6), 910–931
  8. ↑ Lewis, M. W., Andriopoulos, C., & Smith, W. K. (2014). Paradoxical leadership to enable strategic agility. California Management Review. 56(3), 58–77.
  9. ↑ Smith, W. (2014). Dynamic decision making: A model of senior leaders managing strategic paradoxes. Academy of Management Journal. 57(6), 1592–1623.
  10. ↑ Zhang, Y., Waldman, D., Han, Y., & Li, X. B. (2015). Paradoxical leader behaviors in people management: Antecedents and consequences. Academy of Management Journal. 58(2), 538–566.
  11. ↑ Smith, W., Binns, A., & Tushman, M. (2010). Complex business models: Managing strategic paradoxes simultaneously. Long Range Planning. 43(2–3), 448–461.
  12. ↑ Heyden, M. L. M., Oehmichen, J., Nichting, S., & Volberda, H. W. (2015). Board background heterogeneity and exploration-exploitation: The role of the institutionally adopted board model. Global Strategy Journal. 5(2), 154–176.
  13. ↑ Oehmichen, J., Heyden, M. L. M., Georgakakis, D., & Volberda, H. W. (2017). Boards of directors and organizational ambidexterity in knowledge-intensive firms. International Journal of Human Resource Management. 28(2), 283–306.
  14. ↑ Alexiev, A., Jansen, J., Van den Bosch, F., & Volberda, H. (2010). Top management team advice seeking and exploratory innovation: The moderating role of TMT heterogeneity. Journal of Management Studies. 47(7), 1343–1364.
  15. ↑ Andriopoulos, C., & Lewis, M. (2009). Exploitation-exploration tensions and organizational ambidexterity: Managing paradoxes of innovation. Organization Science. 20(4), 696–717.
  16. ↑ Papachroni, A., Heracleous, L., & Paroutis, S. (2016). In pursuit of ambidexterity: Managerial reactions to innovation-efficiency tensions. Human Relations69(9), 1791–1822.
  17. ↑ Yukl, G., & Mahsud, R. (2010). Why flexible and adaptive leadership is essential. Consulting Psychology Journal.62(2), 81–93.
  18. ↑ Im, G., & Rai, A. (2008). Knowledge sharing ambidexterity in long-term interorganizational relationships. Management Science. 54(7), 1281–1296.
  19. ↑ Kauppila, O. P., & Tempelaar, M. P. (2016). The social-cognitive underpinnings of employees’ ambidextrous behaviour and the supportive role of group managers’ leadership. Journal of Management Studies. 53(6), 1019–1044.
  20. ↑ Ahammad, M., Lee, M., Malul, M., & Shoham, A. (2015). Behavioral ambidexterity: The impact of incentive schemes on productivity, motivation, and perfrmance of employees in commercial banks. Human Resource Management. 54(S1), 45–62.
  21. ↑ Crossan, M., Vera, D., & Nanjad, L. (2008). Transcendent leadership: Strategic leadership in dynamic environments. Leadership Quarterly. 19, 569–581.
  22. ↑ Jansen, J., Vera, D., & Crossan, M. (2009). Strategic leadership for exploration and exploitation: The moderating role of environmental dynamism. The Leadership Quarterly. 20(1), 5–18.
  23. 1 2 Kassotaki, O. (2019b). Explaining ambidextrous leadership in the aerospace and defense organizations. European Management Journal. 37(5), 552–563.
  24. ↑ Eisenhardt, K., Furr, N., & Bingham, C. (2010). Microfoundations of performance: Balancing efficiency and flexibility in dynamic environments. Organization Science. 21(6), 1263–1273.
  25. ↑ Wang, S., Luo, Y., Maksimov, V., Sun, J., & Celly, N. (2019). Achieving temporal ambidexterity in new ventures. Journal of Management Studies. 56(4), 788–822.
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