The Social‐Cognitive Underpinnings of Employees’ Ambidextrous Behaviour and the Supportive Role of Group Managers’ Leadership

Abstract

Although research on organizational ambidexterity has exploded in the past several years, the determinants of individual-level ambidexterity have received little scholarly attention. This is surprising given that management scholars increasingly highlight the benefits of combining explorative and exploitative activities in individual employees' work roles. Using data collected by a two-wave survey of 638 employees nested in 173 groups across 34 organizations, our research demonstrates that both psychological factors and leadership predict employees' ambidextrous behaviour. Our results demonstrate that general self-efficacy positively predicts ambidextrous behaviour through learning orientation. In addition, we show that employees exhibit higher ambidexterity when their group managers demonstrate paradoxical leadership; that is, a leadership style that couples strong managerial support with high performance expectations. Paradoxical leadership also moderates the relationship between learning orientation and individual ambidexterity such that employees' ambidextrous behaviour is highest when paradoxical leadership and employee learning orientation are simultaneously at high levels.

Ambidextrous leadership, ambidextrous employee, and the interaction between ambidextrous leadership and employee innovative performance

“…Employee ambidexterity is a multidimensional construct refers to behavioral orientation of employees to combine exploitation and exploration associated activities in a definite period of time (Caniëls and Veld 2016;Kang and Snell 2009;Gibson and Birkinshaw 2004). Instead of being a psychological trait, ambidexterity is an individual behavioral capability to engage in and rotate between paradoxal task elements (Kauppila and Tempelaar 2016).…”

“…Paradoxical leadership-a leadership style that combining leader behaviors that promote employee explorative behaviors with leader behaviors that promote employee exploitative behaviors-is effective in fostering employee ambidexterity since it combines different leader behaviors, and hence matches employee explorative and exploitative behaviors simultaneously. Paradoxical leadership educes exploitative behaviors through communicating leaders' high expectations of their subordinates' job performance while promoting explorative behaviors through creating a support organizational environment that motivates experimentation and tolerance errors of their subordinates (Kauppila and Tempelaar 2016;Gibson and Birkinshaw 2004).…”

“…So far, to the best of my knowledge, there has been no such empirical research in southern Saudi Arabia to examine the core proposition of ambidexterity theory of leadership for innovation. Moreover, despite the fact that individual ambidexterity is widely recognized, research devoted to examine ambidexterity at an individual level of analysis is still very scantly (Kauppila and Tempelaar 2016). Therefore, the current study examines the association between two elements of ambidextrous leadership, i.e., opening and closing leadership behaviors, and two elements of employees' ambidextrous behavior, i.e., exploration and exploitation behaviors, respectively, and the interaction between leader opening and closing behaviors and their influence on employee innovative performance.…”

“…Therefore, it is crucial for organizations to continuously adapt to external threats and opportunities and react with innovations and structural alignments. Organizational literature claimed that successful organizations within dynamic environments are ambidextrous which are aligned and efficient in the present while adaptable to future changes (Kauppila and Tempelaar 2016;Taródy 2016;Cao et al 2009). …”

Managing Innovation Paradox in the Sustainable Innovation Ecosystem: A Case Study of Ambidextrous Capability in a Focal Firm

“…Thus, an effective organizational context or innovation atmosphere should be established to encourage staff to pursue innovation through the paradoxical conduct of exploitation and exploration simultaneously and promote a sustainable innovation product [56]. The positive culture and climate within a company has a clear connection to improved innovativeness and firm performance [19].…”