Organizational ambidexterity and human resource practices

Ambidexterity has been shown to be an important factor for enhancing overall firm performance (Junni, Sarala, Taras, & Tarba, 2013; Turner, Swart, & Maylor, 2013). Organizational ambidexterity can be defined as the capability to concurrently pursue both exploration and exploitation, and make changes resulting from the adoption of multiple, contradictory processes within the same firm (O’Reilly & Tushman, 2004).

The challenge of ambidexterity lies in harmonizing the organization’s strategy with its resources and capabilities (Raisch & Birkinshaw, 2008), such as human resource management practices (McClean & Collins, 2011; Prieto & Pérez Santana, 2012; Ahammad, Lee, Malul, & Shoham, 2015), managerial mechanisms and HRM architecture (Huang & Kim, 2013; Turner & Lee-Kelley, 2013), team exploratory and exploitative learning (Dixon, Meyer, & Day, 2007; Kostopoulos & Bozionelos, 2011), intellectual capital architectures (Kang & Snell, 2009), organizational culture (Wang & Rafiq, 2014) and leadership (Nemanich & Vera, 2009).

A number of scholars have explored how top management team (TMT) characteristics and actions influence organizational ambidexterity (Simsek, 2009). For instance, it has been contended that organizational ambidexterity is augmented when TMT cognitive frames take both exploration and exploitation into consideration (Smith & Tushman, 2005), and when the TMT is behaviorally integrated and united (Lubatkin, Simsek, Ling, & Veiga, 2006). Rather similarly, Jansen, George, van Den Bosch, and Volberda (2008) examined the role of TMT attributes and leadership behavior in integrating contradictory demands among senior managers in trying to attain organizational ambidexterity. They arrived at the conclusion that transformational leadership enhances the effectiveness of TMT characteristics in ambidextrous organizations, and that it facilitates the effectiveness of TMT social integration. Recently, Patel, Messersmith, and Lepak (2013) examined the extent to which a specific kind of human resource management system (e.g. high-performance work system) may serve as an antecedent that enables firms to develop firm ambidexterity. They found that high performance work systems were related to higher levels of organizational ambidexterity.

There has been substantial, though often inconsistent, and even contradictory research on approaches to managing the conflicts between exploration and exploitation (Birkinshaw & Gupta, 2013). Specifically, scant research exists examining the influence of Human Resource (HR) strategy and practices on organisational ambidexterity. In this special issue, we present papers that are examining the impact of HR strategy and practices on ambidexterity phenomenon in the organizational contexts.

The paper by Swart, Turner, Rossenberg and Kinnie (in this special issue) explain how ambidexterity, the simultaneous pursuit of exploration and exploitation, is enabled at the individual level. The paper examines individual actions that are undertaken by employees at particular levels of seniority in the organization to enable ambidexterity. The paper collected survey data from 212 employees (along with 35 interviews) from a UK-based Professional Service Firm. The findings indicate that senior employees are more likely to use ‘integration’, ‘role expansion’ and ‘tone setting’, whilst employees with specialist knowledge about their clients use ‘gap filling’ to enable ambidexterity.

The following paper by Malik, Pereira, and Tarba (in this special issue) examines the role of HRM practices in product development through contextual ambidexterity. By adopting an inductive case study of a US MNC subsidiary in India, the authors found empowerment-focused HRM practices were being used for exploration of new ideas and efficiency-focused HRM practices were adopted for the exploitation of the organisation’s existing strengths. This paper represents a pioneering exploration of multiple levels of analysis (individual, functional, and organisational) for product innovation through the lenses of ambidexterity, innovation, and HRM practices.

Caniëls and Veld (in this special issue) examine whether and how innovative work behaviour is related to explorative and exploitative activities. Polynomial regression analyses are used to test the relationship between ambidexterity and innovative work behaviour, as well as between specialisation (being engaged in either explorative or exploitative activities) and innovative work behaviour. Results indicate that balance at a high level, as well as specialisation, are conducive to innovative work behaviour.

Anchored in the upper echelons perspective, Venugopal, Krishnan, Kumar, and Upadhyayula (in this special issue) examine the influence of TMT processes and mechanisms on organizational ambidexterity. The results from a sample of 78 hi-tech Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) across different industries were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. The authors find the mediating role of TMT behavioural integration in the effect of TMT connectedness and TMT cross-functional interfacing mechanisms on organizational ambidexterity. However, the results show that rewards contingent on organizational performance do not motivate the TMT members to facilitate organizational ambidexterity.

The paper by Kapoutsis, Papalexandris, and Thanos (in this special issue) highlights the role of the individual in the ambidexterity process by introducing the concept of influence tactic ambidexterity, to denote the frequent use of both hard and soft influence and investigating its role on task performance. Drawing on the literature on ambidexterity and HRM, the paper analyses data from a sample of 172 middle managers and their corresponding 68 supervisors working for multinational organizations, and provide evidence that influence tactic ambidexterity relates to higher levels and less variation in managers’ task performance compared to the sole use of either hard or soft tactics. The findings also show that political skill positively moderates the relationship between influence tactic ambidexterity and a manager’s task performance. Therefore, this study suggests that influence tactic ambidexterity and political skill can be considered valuable HR assets for managers.

The next conceptual paper by Hansen, Güttel, and Swart (in this special issue) explain how exploratory, exploitative, and ambidextrous HR architectures with their embedded HRM systems on the business unit level enable organizations to meet different environmental requirements. The authors elucidate how critical the organization’s ability is to connect different HRM systems to create an ambidextrous HR architecture to find an appropriate balance between exploration and exploitation.

Based on 21 interviews with managers in seven multinational firms in Europe, Ferraris, Erhardt, and Bresciani (in this special issue) investigate how ambidextrous work in smart city work is supported through HRM systems. The findings suggest a complex mix of three different HRM systems (one at corporate and two at project levels) designed to support ambidextrous exploratory and exploitation work. Specifically, corporate HRM systems focused on incentives and development of dual capabilities for smart city managers (SCMs). At project levels, interconnected explorative and exploitative HRM systems offered tailored managerial tools to support social integration and knowledge management between internal and external employees.

Cunha, Fortes, Gomes, Rego and Rodrigues (in this special issue) considers that organizations, their leaders and the HRM function are inherently paradoxical and that, in that sense, dealing with paradox is a necessary component of the leadership process which requires ambidexterity capabilities. The paper also explores whether the paradoxes of leadership may manifest differently in different contexts. The paper explores the emergence of paradox in the leadership of Angolan organizations. The findings led to the emergence of four interrelated paradoxes and highlight the importance of ambidextrous paradoxical work as a HRM contingency.

The next paper by Liu, Wang, and Liu (in this special issue) offer an overarching theoretical framework rooted in ambidexterity by connecting the role theory and knowledge acquisition perspective to reconcile the inconsistency of extant findings. The paper argues that role overload has a mediating effect on the relationship between boundary-spanning activities (both transactional and learning) and job satisfaction, whereas knowledge acquisition mediates the relationship between learning boundary-spanning activities and job satisfaction. Furthermore, high achievement motivation and learning goal orientation moderate the positive effect of learning boundary-spanning activities on job satisfaction. The quantitative analysis of IT employees in Chinese state-owned enterprises largely supports the hypotheses of the paper.

Mohammad F. Ahammad and Keith W. Glaister
CIBUL, LUBS, University of Leeds, UK
[email protected]

Paulina Junni
Department of Management Studies, Aalto University, Finland