Ambidexterity In Strategic Management

2.6. Organizational Ambidexterity

Ambidexterity is a topic of interest to a wide variety of disciplines. Coming from the medieval-Latin ‘ambidexter‘, translating into ‘two right hands‘, it can have three meanings: using both hands with equal ease, being characterized by duplicity or double-dealing, or being unusually skillful or versatile (Merriam-Webster 2009). In strategic management research, ambidexterity has evolved into a major line of inquiry (Gupta et al. 2006; Raisch and Birkinshaw 2008). Organizational ambidexterity is considered not only beneficial but in the longer run even essential for organizations to survive and to achieve competitive advantage (Tushman and O‘Reilly 1996). Empirically, this notion has also received ample attention

When these firms adapt ambidextrous strategy to meet increasing pressure of competition, they found it difficult to balancing between exploitation and exploration, and in fact the mainstream exploitation dominates the new stream of exploration. As a result, they return to “repeatable, scalable and the previous systematic manner”, and minimizing “good luck” or hoping to come up with surprising next innovation. In other word, applying ambidextrous strategy has to be tentative on the complexity of issues in the

Further, organizational ambidexterity is defined as a firm’s ability to simultaneously balance different activities in a trade-off situation (Rothaermel & Alexandre, 2009). Tushman and O’Reilly (1996, p.8) define an ambidextrous organization as one that is “able to implement both incremental (i.e., exploitative) and revolutionary (i.e., exploratory) changes.” He and Wong (2004, p. 483) suggest they are “capable of operating simultaneously to explore and exploit.” Smith and Tushman (2005, p. 524) describe them as organizations designed such that they “can both explore and exploit.” Lubatkin et al. (2006, p.2) define them as firms “capable of exploiting existing competencies as well as exploring new opportunities with equal