Managing sequential ambidexterity in the electronics industry: roles of temporal switching capability and contingent factors

Researchers on organisational ambidexterity have proposed several solutions to address the potential conflicts between exploration activities and exploitation activities. Unlike simultaneous ambidexterity, sequential ambidexterity – defined as temporal switching between exploration and exploitation – has not been examined fully, and the conditions under which this temporal switching can be successful are unclear. This paper proposes the concept of temporal switching capability to better understand the process by which sequential ambidexterity is executed. In addition, we hypothesise that performance effects are contingent upon firm-specific factors: a firm’s business strategy and absorptive capacity. Utilising three sources of data – a secondary database, annual reports and a survey administered to 145 firms in the electronics industry with 10-year observations – we find support for our hypotheses. The results show that the temporal switching capability positively relates to new product performance and that business strategy type and absorptive capacity have moderating effects. The results are meaningful in both theory and practice.     

Business intelligence and analytics use,innovation ambidexterity,and firm performance: A dynamic capabilities perspective

To survive in a dynamic and hyper-competitive business environment, firms are compelled to simultaneously introduce incremental and radical innovations. While it is recognised that business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) can support innovation and provide organisational value, the literature provides a limited understanding of its impact on balancing different innovation activities and ensuring performance gains. In this study, we examine the relationship between BI&A use, innovation ambidexterity, and firm performance by relying on the process theory of IS value creation as well as the dynamic capabilities perspective. We test our model using data collected from medium- and large-sized firms in Slovenia, applying partial least squares modelling. The results support the notion that BI&A use is positively associated with successful balancing between explorative and exploitative innovation activities, which in turn enhances firm performance. Our results also indicate that innovation ambidexterity is enhanced in two ways: indirectly through interaction with the firm’s absorptive capacity, and directly by increasing the possibilities of faster experimentation with offerings of products or services and improved predictability of the value of new products or services.     

Exploration–Exploitation: How business analytics powers organisational ambidexterity for environmental sustainability

Simultaneous exploration and exploitation (i.e., exploration–exploitation) can help a firm address short-term environmental requirements and ensure long-term environmental viability. Exploration–exploitation, however, challenges organisational practices because they compete for resources and time. While business analytics (BA) offers the potential to overcome these challenges, research to date offers very limited insights into how BA capabilities interact with ambidextrous capabilities to realise environmental value. We address this issue by conducting a comparative case study at a bank and at a real-estate trust through the theoretical lens of dynamic capabilities. We develop a process model to explain how BA powers ambidextrous practices to achieve sustainability outcomes over time. We uncover two mechanisms: a BA-powered context shaping mechanism by which BA powers contextual ambidexterity at the employee level using data availability, timeliness, and analytics culture; and a BA-powered resource linking mechanism by which BA powers structural ambidexterity at intra- and inter-organisational levels using holistic insights and analytics leadership. Our model highlights the contextual factors that condition the extent to which a firm moves along the continuum of exploration–exploitation. We also define a new dimension of sustainability outcomes which we label eco-awareness to explain how BA shapes employees' environmental alertness and enables the paradigm shift in an organisation's sustainability mindset.     

Technological Diversification Through Corporate Venture Capital Investments: Creating Various Options to Strengthen Dynamic Capabilities

Corporate venture capital (CVC) investment in technology-intensive entrepreneurial ventures has attracted increasing attention from established firms which recognize it as a useful learning investment strategy to create diversified technological options for future change. However, there is a lack of empirical research which examines the relationship between CVC investment and the corporate investors' technological diversification. In this study, we investigate the effects of CVC investments on corporate investors' technological diversity by using 20 years of panel data from corporate investors in five high-tech industries. As a result, we find that the total amount of CVC investments and the industrial diversity of portfolio companies exhibit curvilinear (inverted U-shape) relationships with the corporate investors' technological diversity. Moreover, the empirical results show that the absorptive capacity of corporate investors positively moderates the effects of CVC investments on the technological diversity.     

Leveraging new business innovation for strategic renewal: An organizational framework for strategic corporate venturing

To adapt their competitive advantages for successful strategic renewal, established companies must apply suitable innovation activities. One way to achieve this is the establishment of corporate venturing units that create organizationally consequential new business innovation for their parent company. However, the understanding of the distinctive organizational characteristics for such strategic corporate venturing is limited. To address this gap, our abductive study develops a conceptual organizational framework by linking key concepts of strategic renewal with corporate venturing. This framework is subsequently compared with insights emerging from the qualitative data of 29 corporate venturing units. This comparison allows us to define six types of units with different possible roles for the strategic renewal of the parent company, and a final exploratory organizational framework with distinctive organizational characteristics for strategic corporate venturing. These include a set of dynamic capabilities with corresponding resources as possible enablers for a planned innovation logic that requires interlinked-ambidextrous structures. These findings provide a foundation for an empirical model of strategic corporate venturing, as well as novel insights for establishing dynamic capabilities and ambidexterity within interlinked organizational entities. Practitioners can build on these findings to leverage corporate venturing units as a systematic and organized innovation activity for strategic renewal.     

Flamingos on a slackline: Companies' challenges of balancing the competing demands of handling customer information and privacy

Providers of online services are under increasing pressure to leverage the value inherent in customer data to remain competitive. At the same time, however, Internet users' privacy has become more and more subject to public debate, and companies must protect this privacy if they want to attract and retain customers. It seems that companies struggle to satisfy these competing demands, and neglecting either could have detrimental effects on their success. Different streams of research underline the importance of either privacy protection or the collection and use of customer information. But they remain largely silent about the resulting challenges that companies face. In this study, we address this gap by exploring how companies perceive and handle the tensions between their organizational information needs that necessitate some degree of privacy intrusion and their need to attract and retain customers, which requires privacy protection. We develop a grounded theory that explains how companies balance these opposing demands from an organizational perspective. More specifically, we identify four challenging tensions that define the conditions under which companies must operate. We find that companies try to achieve and maintain a state of balance in the presence of these tensions, and we discover three categories of tactics that help companies in their balancing acts. Our research contributes to a provider‐centric perspective on information privacy and uncovers the management of customer information and privacy as a new but important context in which organizational ambidexterity is required. We offer a detailed perspective on the specific challenges that companies face with respect to customer information and privacy, and our results can guide managers who have to deal with these challenges.     

Resolving paradoxes in IT success through IT ambidexterity: The moderating role of uncertain environments

As information technology (IT) success is both essential and elusive, researchers and practitioners are faced with an ongoing challenge to determine what IT capabilities should be developed to ensure IT success. Drawing on the paradox and ambidexterity theory, we highlight paradoxes in IT success and propose that firms manage these paradoxes by developing an IT ambidexterity capability. We hypothesize that IT ambidexterity capability enhances IT success, and that uncertain environments strengthen this relationship. Our hypotheses find support in a sample of 292 British high-tech firms. This research contributes to conceptualize paradoxes in IT success and advances the theory for a more comprehensive understanding of the impacts of IT ambidexterity capability.     

A study of IS assets,IS ambidexterity,and IS alignment: the dynamic managerial capability perspective

This study aims to explore how IT-business alignment can be better achieved. Drawing on the dynamic capability view, information systems (IS) alignment and IS ambidexterity are theorized as IT departments’ ordinary capability and dynamic managerial capability, respectively. Four IS assets are identified as antecedents of both IS ambidexterity and IS alignment. A research model with 14 hypotheses is tested with a sample of 162 manufacturing firms. The PLS analysis shows that IS ambidexterity can increase IS alignment in terms of operational support and that the four IS assets can affect IS alignment directly or indirectly. Implications for research and practice are provided.