Managing Persistent Tensions on the Frontline: A Configurational Perspective on Ambidexterity

Ambidexterity research has noted that firms’ simultaneous pursuit of exploration and exploitation causes organizational tensions that are difficult to resolve. To make these tensions manageable, scholars have generally suggested that senior managers take the central role in designing organizational...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of management studies Vol. 55; no. 5; pp. 739 - 769
Main Authors: Zimmermann, Alexander, Raisch, Sebastian, Cardinal, Laura B.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.07.2018
Subjects:
ambidexterity
Corporate management
Exploitation
exploration
Flexibility
frontline managers
Handedness
Initiatives
Innovations
Managers
organization design
organizational paradox
qualitative research
Senior managers
Strategic management
ISSN:0022-2380, 1467-6486
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Ambidexterity research has noted that firms’ simultaneous pursuit of exploration and exploitation causes organizational tensions that are difficult to resolve. To make these tensions manageable, scholars have generally suggested that senior managers take the central role in designing organizational solutions, such as the structural separation or contextual integration of the exploratory and exploitative tasks. Yet, in an inductive study of ten corporate innovation initiatives, we find that our informants assigned far less importance to the senior managers’ initial design choices than to the frontline managers’ subsequent configurational practices. Frontline managers used these practices to constantly adapt and align their initiatives’ organizational contexts, which allowed them to cope with persistent exploration‐exploitation tensions in their daily business activities. Based on these empirical insights and drawing on paradox theory, we develop a configurational perspective on ambidexterity, where frontline managers play a more central, proactive, and strategic role than purported by the established design perspective on ambidexterity.
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ISSN:0022-2380
1467-6486
DOI:10.1111/joms.12311