The practitioner’s approach to ambidexterity and organizational learning

Abstract

Change is a continual element of the business environment. Leaders are often tasked with the discrete and paradoxical decision of exploring and learning new competencies or exploiting existing competencies as they drive business performance within the changing environment. The decisions for leaders habitually arise in the form of which of these finite buckets (learning to explore new or exploit existing) to place time, effort, and most importantly money. Converting the polarizing decision to a balanced or ambidextrous view is the theme of this issue of The Learning Organization. If you are leading an organization confronted with pressure to explore new arenas (customer, business models, etc.) and simultaneous exploit or optimize the benefits of the base, this special issue, "Organizational ambidexterity: Two modes of learning", offers ideas in how to overcome the conflicts and possibly explore and exploit simultaneously.March (1991) enlightened us to this exploration versus exploitation paradox in organizational learning almost three decades ago. Since the introduction of exploration and exploitation as a paradoxical arrangement, Tushman and O'Reilly (1996) introduced the concept of ambidexterity, or the ability to deftly manage or balance the countering views almost simultaneously. In this issue of The Learning Organization, the authors present compelling methods for leaders to consider as they balance the countering pulls of exploring or finding and nurturing the next new technology versus exploiting or sustaining the existing technology. In general, there are three methodologies presented across the papers to move an organization toward ambidexterity. As the authors cite, the general methods fall into three groups of structural, sequential or contextual.Before delving too deeply into the concepts, a good starting point in this issue is the book review because the book review itself provides a good practitioner overview of the concepts.Morais-Storz ( 2019) in her review of Lead and Disrupt: How to Solve the Innovator's Dilemma (2016) presents O'Reilly and Tushman's view of the ambidexterity discussion. Within the review, Morais-Storz points to how O'Reilly and Tushman provide insight into 4 steps to answer "what it takes to become ambidextrous" (p. 174). Ideas for the practitioner are most lucid in the leadership practices that O'Reilly and Tushman propose in their definition of the consistently inconsistent leader. For more details on the overview of Lead and Disrupt: How to Solve the Innovator's Dilemma turn to Morais-Storz's book review.Kakkar (2019) in The goblet and two faces: understanding transcendence and paradox from the perspective of Advaita Vendanta, approaches the ambidexterity topic from a contextual approach. As the author states, "the paper introduces the negative dialectic TLO 26,4