1 Why and How to be Ambidextrous? The Relationship between Environmental Factors, Innovation Strategy and Organizational Capabilities Pei-Wen Huang Department of Business Management Cheng-Shiu University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan Graduate School of Management I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan Email: [email protected] Correspondence: Pei-Wen Huang, Department of Business Management, Cheng-Shiu University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Graduate School of Management, I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan Email: [email protected] 2 Why and How to be Ambidextrous? The Relationship between Environmental Factors, Innovation Strategy and Organizational Capabilities ABSTRACT “Organizational ambidexterity” has become an emerging research trend in both the organizational management and knowledge management field (Gibson & Birkinshaw, 2004; He & Wong, 2004). The central theme on organizational ambidexterity is about organizational capability to simultaneously deal with paradoxical or conflicting activities such as organizational alignment and adaptation; evolutionary and revolutionary change; manufacturing efficiency and flexibility; strategic alliance formation; and even strategic renewal (Adler, Goldoftas, & Levine, 1999; Crossan, Lane, & White, 1999; Gibson & Birkinshaw, 2004; Lin, Haibin, & Demirkan, 2007; Tushman & O'Reilly, 1996). Exploitation and exploration are the most recurrent underlying dimensions regarding organizational ambidexterity. This paper tries to gain more insight on organizational ambidexterity by constructing a comprehensive conceptual framework. In particular, our research interest is to investigate why organizations need to be ambidextrous in the first place? How can organizations enhance ambidexterity? A conceptual framework has been proposed regarding the relationship between environmental factors, innovation strategy and 3 organizational capabilities. Keyword: ambidexterity, innovation strategy INTRODUCTION “Organizational ambidexterity” has become an emerging research trend in both the organizational management and knowledge management field (Gibson et al., 2004; He et al., 2004). The central theme on organizational ambidexterity is about organizational capability to simultaneously deal with paradoxical or conflicting activities such as organizational alignment and adaptation; evolutionary and revolutionary change; manufacturing efficiency and flexibility; strategic alliance formation; and even strategic renewal (Adler, Goldoftas, & Levine, 1999; Crossan, Lane, & White, 1999; Gibson & Birkinshaw, 2004; Lin, Haibin, & Demirkan, 2007; Tushman & O'Reilly, 1996). This emerging issue has increasingly gained its weight in research since organizations have to cope with or balance the seemingly contradictory tension within organizations under more and more dynamic environment and severe competition (Nonaka, Toyama, & Byosiere, 2001). Due to the dynamism and complexity of the environment, organizations’ short-term success does not necessarily guarantee their long term survival. Therefore, research on “organizational ambidexterity” tries to find out how organizations manage to maintain today’s success 4 while preparing to adapt to tomorrow’s changing environment (Jansen, Bosch, & Volberda, 2005a). Exploitation and exploration are the most recurrent underlying dimensions regarding organizational ambidexterity. In general terms, March (1991) described exploitation related to things like “refinement, choice, production, efficiency, selection, implementation and execution” and exploration being relevant to “search, variation, risk taking, experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery, innovation”. March stressed that both exploitation and exploration are learning activities. In his words, “the essence of exploitation is the refinement and extensions of existing competencies, technologies, and paradigms; and the essence of exploration is experimentation with new alternatives” (1991:85). According to the definitions, exploitative and exploratory activities would require different and sometimes conflicting resources, mindsets and organizational procedures (Gupta, Smith, & Shalley, 2006; March, 1991). Therefore, should or could organizations pursue both activities to be ambidextrous also receives challenges (Raisch & Birkinshaw, 2008). Traditionally, scholars regard exploitative and explorative innovation demand different attention and resources (Duncan, 1976; Gibson et al., 2004). Due to limited resources, they are confronted with the tension between exploiting what they know 5 and exploring what they do not know since both exploitation and exploration are essential capabilities to their long term survival (Lewin, Long, & Carroll, 1999; March, 1991). Therefore, organizations find themselves under more and more pressures to cope with the tension between exploitation and exploration (Jansen, Van Den Bosch, & Volberda, 2006; Tushman & O'Reilly, 1996). Since March’s (1991) seminal work on exploitation and exploration, these two underlying dimensions of organizational ambidexterity have been treated as two incompatible or competing concepts (Tushman & O'Reilly, 1996). They argued that exploitation and exploration are two ends of the continuum. Owing to limited organizational resources, organizations have to make a choice between one of them. In other words, the strategic choice between exploitation and exploration is a trade-off (Liu, 2006). Recently, the trade-off view of exploitation and exploration has been challenged by many scholars (Raisch et al., 2008). They pointed out that organizational resources may not necessarily be limited. For example, organizational knowledge has the characteristics of being accumulated more and more by just utilizing it (Huber, 1991). In addition, there are also other means of acquiring resources external to organizations such as strategic alliance or merger and acquisition (Gupta, Smith, & Shalley, 2006). Therefore, regarding exploitation and exploration, some researchers have moved from a trade-off (either/or) thinking to a paradoxical (both/and) one (e.g. Duncan, 1976; 6 Gibson et al., 2004). Recent research starts to be interested in the possibility of the interaction between these two dimensions. Once the organizational resources are not so limited, organizations seem to be able to manage both activities simultaneously. Our research interest in this paper is to investigate why organizations need to be ambidextrous in the first place? What is the impact of environmental pressures perceived by organizations’ top management team on their strategic choices in terms of innovation? What are the internal factors that may enhance organizations’ ambidextrous strategy (adoption of both exploitative and explorative strategies)? We presume that why organizations need to be ambidextrous is the most fundamental question that we should ask if we are to contribute to the concerning literature. Furthermore, when top management teams perceive the external pressures to be ambidextrous, they might be eager to explore the internal factors that enhance such strategies. Literature regarding how to enhance organizational ambidexterity seems to be limited. We conclude that when organizations feel the need to adopt ambidextrous innovation strategy, combinative capabilities and absorptive capabilities could enhance this strategy and achieve better performance in new product development. LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORY DEVELOPMENT “Organizational ambidexterity” has become an emerging research trend in both 7 the organizational management and knowledge management field (Gibson et al., 2004). Organizational scholars have been trying to define what organizational ambidexterity is. Broadly speaking, organizational ambidexterity could refer to organizations’ ability to simultaneously deal with two paradoxical demand such as alignment and adaptation (Birkinshaw & Gibson, 2004), evolutionary and revolutionary change (Tushman et al., 1996), efficiency and flexibility (Adler, Goldoftas, & Levine, 1999), differentiation and low-cost strategy (Porter, 1996), global integration and local responsiveness (Doz, Bartlett, & Prahalad, 1981), zero-level capabilities and higher-order capabilities (Winter, 2003), and incremental and radical innovation (Benner & Tushman, 2003). More specifically, Jansen, Van den Bosch and Volberda (2005a) treated organizational ambidexterity as “the ability to pursue exploratory and exploitative innovation simultaneously”. Tushman and O’Reilly (1996) described ambidexterity as “the ability to simultaneously pursue both incremental and discontinuous innovation and change”. Duncan (1976) paid attention to the structural arrangement to cope with innovation. March (1991), Levinthal and March (1993) maintained that balance between exploitation and exploration is advantageous for firm’s long term success. The nature of ambidexterity is also implicitly recognized in the dynamic capabilities literature which urges the need to blend two different strategic logic - exploitation and exploration- within organizations 8 (Ancona, Goodman, Lawrence, & Tushman, 2001; Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000). In this paper, we specifically regard organizational ambidexterity embodied on organizations’ strategic choice. That is, organizations simultaneously adopt exploitative and explorative innovation strategies. Scholars that maintain organizational ambidexterity should be pursued by organizations have two basic assumptions. First, the relationship between exploitation and exploration is orthogonal rather than two ends of a continuum. Since March (1991) made a distinction between exploitation and exploration based on organizational learning theory, most research treated exploitation and exploration as a trade-off under the constraint of limited organizational resources. However, recent research explored the possibility of the interactive relationship between these two dimensions, arguing that not all organizational resources are limited and constrained. Organizational resources such as knowledge and information may have the characteristics of being accumulated more and more by using it (Shapiro & Varian, 1998). Second, even though exploitation and exploration generally require quite different mindset and organizational routines, both activities could still be executed under different domains in terms of different knowledge or separate units (Gupta et al., 2006). Exploitation and exploration would be mutually exclusive when they are considered within single individual or subsystem. However, across different domains, it is possible that 9 organizations arrange two different activities at different units or individuals be executed. This argument implies that the more resources or individuals that organizations possess, the more possible that organizations to present ambidexterity. Therefore, in this paper, we generally consider that not all organizations could pursue both exploitation and exploration and benefit from the interaction between these two. The issue of organizational ambidexterity is very contingent on different organizational conditions both internally or even externally. Two streams of research on the antecedents of organizational ambidexterity were mostly studied in the literature, namely structural ambidexterity (Duncan, 1976) and contextual ambidexterity (Gibson et al., 2004). According to Duncan, the most important factor to influence organizational ambidexterity is its formal structure. By deliberately separating different units to execute different tasks, organizations manage to solve the conflicting demands from exploitation and exploration. The main argument in structural ambidexterity follows the logic of organizational design theories in that organizational structure supports knowledge-related activities within organizations (Ettlie, Bridges, & O'Keefe, 1984). In a meta analysis of organizational factors influencing innovation, Damanpour (1991) concluded formalization, centralization, horizontal differentiation, and vertical differentiation as four most important structural constructs. Some other research argued that configuration, 10 complexity, formalization and centralization as critical (Blackburn & Cummings, 1982). In the organizational ambidexterity literature, decentralization and formalization are two most studied constructs (e.g. Jansen et al., 2005a, 2006) . As for the more precise picture of being ambidextrous organizations, Benner & Tushman (2003) explicated a more specific picture: Ambidextrous organization designs are composed of highly differentiated but weakly integrated subunits. While the exploratory units are small and decentralized, with loose cultures and processes, the exploitation units are larger and more centralized, with tight cultures and processes. Exploratory units succeed by experimenting- by frequently creating small wins and losses (Sitkin, 1992). Because process management tends to drive out experimentation, it must be prevented from migrating into exploratory units and processes. In contrast, exploitation units that succeed by reducing variability and maximizing efficiency and control are an ideal location for the tight coordination associated with process management efforts (2003: 252). The nature of studying organizational structure is to find out how conflicting organizational activities could be reconciled through organizational arrangement. Broadly speaking, this research stream recognized the fact that organizational ambidexterity could be achieved as long as conflicting activities are balanced. Organizational structure reflects how exploitation and exploration are coordinated and arrayed within organizations. Generally, conflicting activities must be executed separately. In contrast to structural ambidexterity, another research stream treats organizational ambidexterity as a trait of organizational behavior. By studying the 11 requisite contextual conditions, they claimed the significance of the organizational systems and process for enhancing organizational ambidexterity. Gibson and Birkinshaw (2004) termed contextual ambidexterity as “the behavioral capacity to simultaneously demonstrate alignment and adaptability across an entire business unit”. Therefore, to achieve ambidexterity, organizations’ task is to arrange a set of process and system that could enable as well as encourage organization members to perform ambidextrous behavior by their own judgment. This research stream generally considers the contextual factors such as connectedness, trust, stretch, discipline and support as most influential. Although scholars are eager to examine the antecedents of organizational ambidexterity, empirical findings did not completely support the ambidexterity hypothesis in the strategy literature. Some studies found that firms pursuing different strategies at the same time may not result in better performance than those focusing on either one strategy (Ebben & Johnson, 2005; Ghemawat & Costa, 1993; Porter, 1980). In this paper, we argue that to achieve organizational ambidexterity, some contingent conditions must be met. To be more specific, both external and internal conditions must fit to make the organizations perform better. In the following sections, we first explicate the dimensions of organizational ambidexterity. Then we try to find out the factors affecting organizations to be ambidextrous. 12 Though organizational ambidexterity embodied on many organizational aspects, such as alignment and adaptation (Gibson et al., 2004), evolutionary and revolutionary change (Tushman, O'Reilly, & Anderson, 2004), efficiency and flexibility (Adler et al., 1999; Ebben & Johnson, 2005), this paper focuses on aspects related to organizational innovation. We are interested in organizational innovation in that capabilities of innovation have been regarded as main sources of competitive advantages (Grant, 1996a; Marsh & Stock, 2006). In addition, through innovation, organizations evolve and adapt to the changing environment (Nelson & Winter, 1982). Organizations adapt to the changing environment by utilizing their existing technology or knowledge and also by creating new ones (Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997). In the following section, we discuss different types of innovation and the relationship between organizational ambidexterity. Innovation and Organizational Ambidexterity Technological Innovation has been considered one of the most important sources of competitive advantages in the literature. However, the field of innovation is very broad. Therefore, before investigating any further the relationship between innovation and organizational ambidexterity, we would like to clarify the concept of innovation first. 13 Innovation has been generally distinguished between technological and administrative innovation. Technological innovation is more task-oriented and knowledge or technology focused. On the other hand, administrative innovation pertains to organizational structure, administrative processes and human resources management (Damanpour, 1996). In this paper, we focus our research on technological innovation. In other words, we are more concerned about the knowledge or technology that organizations utilize or create to produce new products to satisfy different market demand. To further classify its concept, technological innovation is distinguished between component knowledge (knowledge of core concepts of components) and architectural knowledge (knowledge of how the components and competence can be combined and linked) (Henderson & Clark, 1990). The distinction between component knowledge and architectural knowledge is useful for us to examine how innovations affect different kinds of organizational knowledge (Benner, 2002). Incremental and Radical Innovation Since Schumpeter’s (1942) notion of creative destruction, literature on technological innovation has differentiated different kinds of innovations in terms of their impact on organizations’ established capabilities or the degree of radicalness or novelty compared with their existing knowledge or technology (Damanpour, 1991; Henderson & Clark, 1990). Incremental innovation 14 refines and improves existing components or products while radical innovation represents departure from existing organizational knowledge. They are mostly conceptualized as two ends of a continuum. In addition to radical and incremental innovations, Henderson and Clark (1990) further identified two more categories: modular and architectural innovations. Modular innovations depict the innovation that change the core concept of the core components and leave the products’ architecture intact. To the contrary, architectural innovations reconfigure the existing components and create new relationships among them. To simplify our analysis of technological innovation, we regard architectural innovation as one kind of incremental innovation and modular innovation as radical one. In the same vein with Henderson and Clark (1990), we regard these different types of innovation are just matters of degree and there are no definite boundaries between these different categories. Moreover, the degree of radicalness or novelty should be defined in terms of organizations’ existing knowledge. For example, radical innovation adopted by small firms may be treated as incremental innovation in larger organizations. Therefore, the distinction between different types of innovation is helpful for us to understand possible outcomes of innovations. Definition of Exploitation and Exploration Exploitation and exploration are two recurrent dimensions in the organization management literature such as innovation, 15 organizational design, organizational alignment and adaptation, organizational learning, and even strategic alliance. The key issue on organizational ambidexterity is the balance between exploitation and exploration. We would like to discuss two aspects regarding exploitation and exploration. First is the issue of definition, and the second one is the relationship between these two dimensions. The definitions of exploitation and exploration receive a lot of debate. Gupta and his colleagues (2006) argued that the ambiguity lies in whether these two represent different types of learning or they can be simply distinguished by the presence or absence of learning. To be more specific, most researchers agree that only exploration involves learning activities. As for exploitation, whether it also represents a kind of organizational learning to certain degree has not reached a consensus. Those who agree that both exploitation and exploration are learning activities assert that both activities move along with the learning curve even when they are just reusing past knowledge. March (1991) described exploitation related to things like “refinement, choice, production, efficiency, selection, implementation and execution” and exploration is relevant to “search, variation, risk taking, experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery, innovation”. March stressed that either exploitation or exploration includes at least some learning. In his words, “the essence of exploitation 16 is the refinement and extensions of existing competencies, technologies, and paradigms and the essence of exploration is experimentation with new alternatives” (1991:85). According to Baum and his colleagues, “exploitation refers to learning gained via local search, experiential refinement, and selection of existing routines and exploration refers to learning gained through processes of concerted variation, planned experimentation, and play” (2000:768). Drawing on learning literature, Benner and Tushman (2002) also defined exploitation and exploration by the location of search. They claimed that exploitation involving local search for firm’s existing technological capabilities while exploration is a distant search for new opportunities. Though both exploitation and exploration are learning activities, they follow entirely different learning trajectories. He and Wong (2004) distinguished exploitation from exploration by whether organizational innovation aiming at improving existing product-market domains or entering new product-market position. In contrast, some scholars assert that there is no learning at all when organizations are engaged in exploitation since they just reuse their existing knowledge. That is, exploration is the only activity that accounts for learning and leads to innovation. Rosenkopft and Nerkar (2001) explicitly treated all activities as a kind of exploration. In conclusion, we follow Yell’s (1979) assertion that “even when an organization is attempting to do nothing more than replicate past actions, it accumulates experience and goes down the 17 learning curve, albeit in an incremental manner.” Drawing on organizational learning theory, we regard both exploitation and exploration as important organizational approaches of utilizing, searching, and creating organizational knowledge. Regarding the relationship between exploitation and exploration to organizational innovation, it is generally considered that exploitation lead to incremental innovation and exploration inclines for radical innovation. Different outcome of innovation needs different types of innovation activities. Through exploitative and explorative activities, organizations accumulate learning experience to refine and improve their organizational effectiveness. To avoid competence trap and failure trap, both activities are required (Ancona et al., 2001; Benner & Tushman, 2002; Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000; Levinthal & March, 1993; Liu, 2006; March, 1991, 1996, 2006). Particularly, the balance between exploitation and exploration has been widely accepted as critical to organizational success (Levinthal et al., 1993; Lewin, Long, & Carroll, 1999; March, 1991). As March noted, “Adaptive systems that engage in exploration to the exclusion of exploitation are likely to find that they suffer the costs of experimentation without gaining many of the benefits. They exhibit too many undeveloped new ideas and too little distinctive competence. Conversely, systems that engage in exploitation to the exclusion of exploration are likely to find themselves trapped in suboptimal stable equilibria” (1991). Therefore, how to achieve a balance 18 between these two activities became central issue in the organizational ambidexterity literature. The Relationship (Tension) between Exploitation and Exploration The main reason that exploitation and exploration have been treated as two ends of a continuum is the concern of organizational scarce resources. Most scholars have regarded these two dimensions requiring different organizational resources and attention. As mentioned in the above section, one of the premises of organizational ambidexterity is that the relationship between exploitation and exploration could be orthogonal. That is, organizations could arrange both activities simultaneously when there is slack resource and when these activities could be executed by separate organization units or members. Katila and Ahuja (2002) explicitly treated exploitation and exploration as two distinct dimensions to be distinguished from those who position local search and distant search in a unidimensional spectrum. The empirical findings support their argument about exploitation and exploration. When these two activities are not limited to resource constraints, the interaction between these two could positively affect organizations’ new product introduction, which is consistent with March’s (1991) assertion. Based on organizational learning perspective, Katila and Ahuja 19 (2002) also recognized that organizations engage in many kinds of search activities to solve problems. They define exploitation as “search depth”, which describes how deeply organizations use and reuse their existing knowledge. As for exploration, they call it as “search scope”, describing it as how widely organizations explore new knowledge. Although organizational learning helps the development of exploitation and exploration, it also inhibits innovation in some way. Exploitation may lead to competence trap and exploration may lead to failure trap owing to the effect of organizational learning. Therefore, it is not easy to maintain a balance between exploitation and exploration. Pressures for Exploitation and Exploration Although proposals of “organizational ambidexterity” advocate ambidextrous organizations would outperform non-ambidextrous firms, few studies have asked the most fundamental issue: “why organizations need to be or have to be ambidextrous?” We posit that, since it is not easy to keep both exploitation and exploration balanced, “being ambidextrous” is not necessarily the organizations’ first priority. To make sure firm’s current viability, most firms would incline for exploitative strategy since its outcome is more certain and could be expected in the short term. When the market competition 20 is intense, exploitative strategy seems to be the most secured way to remain survived. On the other hand, since explorative strategy means experimentation and variation, its outcome is uncertain and can not be expected. Therefore, we do not reckon the fact that all organizations would opt for ambidexterity in terms of innovation in the first place. Therefore, we wonder what the factors that affect organizations’ innovation strategy are. In the organizational ambidexterity literature, most studies focused on the internal antecedents that affect organizational ambidexterity. In this paper, we would like to fill the literature gap to argue that environmental conditions may be major forces of firm’s strategic choices which is consistent to the logic of contingency perspective. We posit that the different extent of task environment pressures perceived by organizations’ top management team may play an important role on the decision making. Therefore, in this paper, we would first infer that organizations would choose to be ambidextrous only when they perceive the pressures to be so. However, ambidextrous organizations do not necessarily outperform other forms of organization. This argument is analyzed from two aspects. First, not all organizations perceive the same degree of environmental pressures even when they are in the same industry. We argue that organizations would choose to be or not to be ambidextrous according to the top management teams’ perception of the environmental pressures. Our rationale 21 is in the same vein with the integration-responsiveness framework in the international business theory. The fit between environmental pressures and organizations’ strategic choice is our first concern. Second, when organizations feel the pressures to pursue both exploitative and explorative innovation simultaneously, they have to possess the abilities to do so. Only when they want to be ambidextrous and are capable of being one, would they perform better than other firms. In this section, we would first discuss the pressures for exploitation and exploration that perceived by the organizations’ top management team. We argue that the strategic choice between either exploitative or explorative innovation, or to do both, is the result of environmental pressures. Traditional contingency theories suggest that environment has significant impact on organizations’ strategy (Burns & Stalker, 1961; Dess & Beard, 1984; Miller & Friesen, 1984). The fact that managerial perceptions of organizational environment shaping managerial choice has long been reckoned in several research (e.g. Duncan, 1972; Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967). One way to understand the effect of environment on organizations is through managerial perceptions (Sharfman & Dean, 1991). Organizations behave in the way that how managers perceive the environment and respond to it. Three most studied dimensions of the environment are “munificence”, “complexity” and “dynamism” (Dess & Beard, 1984). 22 Environmental Munificence Starbuck (1976) conceptualized environmental munificence as the extent to which the environment can support sustained growth. Aldrich (1979) referred as environmental capacity. To synthesize, Dess and Beard (1984) treated environmental munificence as organizations’ seeking opportunities to grow and therefore generate slack resources as organizations’ buffer for scarcity. One of the important factors that determine environmental munificence relates to the industry product life cycle. Rate of market growth implies for the environmental capacity that organizations could expand in the market. When the product market is growing, organizations may obtain more resources from the environment and are more capable of adopting explorative innovation strategy. Therefore, environmental munificence not only supports the existing product market but also represents the capacity to encompass new products. Proposition 1-1. Top management teams’ perception of environmental munificence has a positive effect on their adoption of both exploitative and explorative (ambidextrous) innovation strategies. Environmental Dynamism A dynamic environment is characterized by unpredictable change (Lawless & Finch, 1989). Changes in technologies, customer preferences, and demand or supply of products and services make current products 23 and services obsolete and therefore require new variations (Jansen et al., 2005a; Sorensen & Stuart, 2000). To minimize the threat of obsolescence, organizations need both incremental and radical innovations to satisfy the existing market and prepare for the emerging market. By exploitative and explorative activities, organizations search information extensively to lessen pressures of uncertainty. Facing dynamic environment, organizations are under the pressures to respond to all kinds of change. Proposition 1-2. Top management teams’ perception of environmental dynamism has a positive effect on their adoption of both exploitative and explorative (ambidextrous) innovation strategies. Environmental Complexity This dimension refers to the amount and variety that organizations should deal with in the environment (Lawless et al., 1989). As the amount and variety increases, the degree of complexity increases too. For example, environmental density means the concentration of competing firms. When the competition is more intense and concentrated, organizations would need more effort on monitoring customers, suppliers and competitors. Under complex environment, organizations would feel the need to keep improving their existing market and to explore new opportunities or possibilities. Proposition 1-3. Top management team’s perception of environmental 24 complexity has a positive effect of their adoption of both exploitative and explorative (ambidextrous) innovation strategies. Fit Between Environmental Factors and the Adoption of Strategy The concept of fit is a central theme both in the strategic management literature and contingency perspectives (Porter, 1996; Venkatraman, 1989; Zajac, Kraatz, & Bresser, 2000). Porter argued that strategic fit is fundamental to both competitive advantages and the sustainability of those advantages. In this regard, we posit that the concept of fit is very similar to our notion of organizational ambidexterity. In addition, the concept of fit in the strategy literature also stands for better performance (Ginsberg & Venkatraman, 1985; Katsikeas, Samiee, & Theodosiou, 2006; Lukas, Tan, & Hult, 2001). Organizations that adopt a “fit” or “matching” strategy with the environmental demand would end up with superior performance. The concept of “fit” between strategy and environment depicts the appropriateness of the adopted strategy by organizations (Zajac et al., 2000). Organization adopting “fit” strategy would outperform others because this strategy matches the environment demand or conditions. Regarding the central issue of this research, the adoption of innovation strategy depends on the environmental pressures perceived by top management teams. When top management teams perceive the 25 pressures to deal with and manage both existing and emerging product market and therefore adopt an ambidextrous innovation strategy, organizations would be better off than if they do not adopt a fit strategy. Proposition 2. Firms perceived high degree of munificence, dynamism and complexity and adopt ambidextrous strategy would outperform those perceive the same degree of environmental needs but do not adopt ambidextrous strategy Capabilities to be Ambidextrous The key issue in how organizations can be ambidextrous resides in how both exploitation and exploration can be simultaneously managed. As we mentioned before, March (1991) maintained that an appropriate balance between exploitation and exploration is critical for firm’s survival and growth. Tushman and O’Reilly (1996) also suggested that an ambidextrous organization is like a juggler that can both compete in mature markets (where cost, efficiency, and incremental innovation are important) and develop new products and services for emerging markets (where experimentation, speed and flexibility are vital). They argued that an ambidextrous firm that is capable of operating simultaneously to explore and exploit is likely to achieve superior performance than firms emphasizing on one at the expense of the other. Therefore, when we consider how organizations can be ambidextrous, we 26 wonder what capabilities organizations can possess to engage in both exploitation and exploration. Since organizations’ ability to be ambidextrous is discussed at an organizational level, we investigate what capabilities organizations have to possess to facilitate their innovation performance in terms of new product development. Two capabilities are identified as most important capabilities that contribute to organizational ambidexterity: combinative capabilities and absorptive capabilities. We discuss how these two capabilities may enhance the implementation of ambidextrous innovation strategy in details. Combinative Capabilities The resource-based view of the firm maintains that the source of competitive advantages depending on the development of firm’s specific competence and capabilities (Barney, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1984, 1995). However, recent research has moved beyond “local search” within organizations and stressed that reconfiguration of organizational resources and knowledge is also critical to the development of competitive advantages (Rosenkopf & Nerkar, 2001). Based on Henderson and Cockbun’s (1994) logic, local search is similar to search for organizational “component competence”, which is fundamental to everyday task requirement; while 27 reconfiguration is parallel to “architectural competence”, which is to utilize and integrate the existing component competence and to generate new component competence. Either of these capabilities is vital to firm’s sustained competitive advantages. It is this capability of integrating knowledge rather than knowledge itself that constitutes competitive advantage(Boer, Van den Bosch, & Volberda, 1999). Several studies have tried to capture the essence of organizational reconfiguration. Kogut and Zander (1992) recognized firms’ ability to synthesize and apply existing knowledge as “combinative capabilities”. The purpose of knowledge or resources combination is to generate new forms of existing knowledge that would ultimately be commercialized in the market. This concept is also similar to the concept of “integration” (Grant, 1996a) and “reconfiguration” (Henderson et al., 1990). Since exploitation means the refinement and improvement of existing knowledge, we regard combinative capabilities as one of the “process facilitators” that contribute to the performance of ambidextrous strategy. The importance of organizational “combinative capabilities” to organizational ambidexterity is in that they are the sources of organizational uniqueness (Katila & Ahuja, 2002). The fundamental technological knowledge possessed by organizations may be similar across the industry. However, what makes organizations to be distinct and unique from others are the processes and systems utilizing and integrating organizational knowledge. In 28 the literature, “routines” (Nelson et al., 1982) and “metaroutines” (Adler et al., 1999) represent some characteristics of combinative capabilities since they are the distinct ways that organizations solve problems. Three types of combinative capabilities, namely systems capabilities, coordination capabilities and socialization capabilities, are generally discussed in the literature (Boer et al., 1999; Jansen et al, 2005b; Van den Bosch, Volberda, & Boer, 1999). Each of the capabilities has its special function for organizations’ innovation. Therefore, though we discuss these capabilities distinctively, we would also like to emphasize the need for all of these three capabilities to achieve organizational ambidexterity. Systems capabilities This type of capabilities is relevant to the formal mechanisms of combining organizational knowledge and resources. Organizations employ rules, procedures, instructions and communication channels to complete task requirements. Systems capabilities are very useful for integrating organizations’ explicit knowledge. The innovation literature has recognized formalization as an important antecedent of ambidexterity (Damanpour, 1991; Jansen et al., 2005a, 2006; Khandwalla, 1977). Systems capabilities such as formalization integrate and combine organizations’ knowledge or resources in most efficient fashion because they eliminate unnecessary communication and coordination (Boer et al., 1999). Formalized working rules and procedures enhance organizational efficiency in 29 integrating and combing knowledge and resources. However, they might hamper organization’s innovativeness since they allow less variation and constrain organizational development within existing reference of frame. Therefore, systems capabilities alone do not enhance organizational ambidexterity. Coordination capabilities Based on knowledge-based view, organizational knowledge is dispersed and embedded in organization members. One of organizations’ primary tasks is to coordinate and therefore collect the efforts made by different specialists (Grant, 1996b). Organizational coordination is regarded as solution to align conflicting goals within organization members (Lawrence et al., 1967). Kogut and Zander (1996) argued that coordination converges conflicting expectations within organizations. Hence, coordination capabilities facilitate lateral communication across disciplines and organizational boundaries (Henderson & Cockburn, 1994; Teece et al., 1997). Coordination capabilities complement systems capabilities since systems capabilities mostly depending on vertical communication. Boer, Van den Bosch and Volberda (1999) deemed coordination capabilities as organizations’ way of relating individuals, tasks and divisions. Mechanisms such as cross-functional interfaces, participation in decision making and job rotation are employed by organizations to coordinate organizational activities (Jansen, Bosch, & Volberda, 2005b). In turbulent environment, mutual adjustment is regarded as vital 30 way of knowledge coordination (Mintzberg, 1979). Mutual adjustment needs interaction and coordination capabilities facilitate frequency and quality of interaction within organization members or among divisions. Technological innovation, especially in terms of exploration, requires variety of knowledge, thinking and ideas. Coordination among individuals and organizational activities enhance the possibility of creating new knowledge. To enhance organizations’ ambidextrous innovation strategy, both systems and coordination capabilities should be in place to complement each other. Socialization capabilities These capabilities are contrary to systems capabilities. Systems capabilities are solid structure of how organizations arrange organizational activities and solve problems while socialization capabilities are the soft mechanisms that make organizations stick together. In the innovation and ambidexterity literature, connectedness (Jansen et al., 2005a, 2006) represents social relations that exist among organization members. Formal procedures and arrangement within organizations though directly help solve problems, informal interaction among individuals also help exchange and flow of organizational knowledge. From knowledge-based view, organizations are social communities that integrate different expertise (Kogut et al., 1992). Therefore, socialization capabilities that organizations possess may enhance organizations’ ambidextrous strategy. 31 Different dimensions of combinative capabilities perform different functions for achieving organizations’ ambidextrous strategy. We posit that the interaction between these capabilities could moderate the relationship between ambidextrous strategy and innovation performance. Proposition 3. The strength of the relationship between ambidextrous strategy and new product development performance is positively related to combinative capabilities (the interaction of systems, coordination, socialization capabilities). Absorptive Capabilities In the previous section, we discuss that organizations choose to be ambidextrous under environmental pressures. This particular environment is characterized as munificent, dynamic and complex. Under such hypercompetitive context, organizations not only create and commercialize new knowledge by utilizing existing knowledge, they have to sense the opportunities and threat and seize the opportunities to obtain useful resources (Teece, 2007). Cohen and Levinthal (1990) refer such ability to sense and seize new knowledge outside of organizations as absorptive capabilities. More specifically, they define absorptive capabilities as “the firm’s ability to value, assimilate, and apply new knowledge”. Such capabilities enable firms in hypercompetitive context to explore new knowledge outside organizations 32 therefore contribute to organizations’ exploration. Absorptive capabilities are especially essential for firms’ under selection pressures. Hypothesis 4. The strength of the relationship between ambidextrous strategy and new product development performance is positively related to absorptive capabilities. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Insert Figure 1 here ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our specific relationships among these constructs are depicted as above (Figure 1). We explicated that the adoption of organizations’ innovation strategy (specifically ambidextrous strategy here) is affected by top management team’s perception of environmental pressures. Organizations’ new product development performance depends on whether organizations adopt a “fit” strategy with their external environment. As for how organizations could enhance their new product development performance when they adopt an ambidextrous strategy, it depends on organizational capabilities. Combinative capabilities and absorptive capabilities are two “process-facilitators” we inferred from the literature. These two capabilities provide the requisite capabilities of exploiting existing organizational knowledge while 33 maintaining unique by exploring new knowledge and possibilities. Conclusion This paper explores the organizational ambidexterity from strategic management perspective and knowledge-based view. Previous issue did not explicitly link the strategic choice of innovation strategy with knowledge-based view. We tried to fill this literature gap and emphasize the fit concept between strategic choices and environmental demand for ambidextrous organizations. Based on knowledge-based view, we argue that when organizations perceive the pressures to engage in both exploitative and exploration activities, certain organizational capabilities are essential to the achievement of organizational ambidexterity. Previous research seems to put less emphasis on organizational capabilities. In an era of knowledge economy, knowledge-based view would provide more insight on the concerning issue. In conclusion, our research aims to provide more insight from different and more related perspectives to the concept of ambidexterity. Organizations’ strategy is often determined and influenced by their environment, especially when this environment is highly dynamic and competitive. To consider the fitness of the innovation strategy adopted by organizations, we posit that environmental pressures should be examined in the first place. Strategic management literature has put lots of emphasis on the 34 concept of fit, stating that the adoption of fit strategy would support organizations’ growth. Previous research on organizational ambidexterity did not emphasize the concept of fit between environment and strategy. We fill the literature gap in this research. Another contribution of this research is that we not only examine organizations’ external environment, we argue that certain capabilities in terms of knowledge-based view should be taken into account as well. Since the nature of organizational ambidexterity is the tension between exploitation and exploration, such capabilities should be able to combine and integrate different knowledge activities within organizations. We propose that combinative capabilities and absorptive capabilities positively enhance the relationship between ambidextrous strategy and its performance on new product development. For managerial implication, we presume that this conceptual framework regarding organizational ambidexterity would give managers a comprehensive picture of why they have to adopt ambidextrous innovation strategy and how to simultaneously manage exploitative and explorative innovation capabilities when they have to do so. REFERENCES Adler, P. S., Goldoftas, B., & Levine, D. I. 1999. 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Research Framework Environmental Pressures Munificence Dynamism Complexity Ambidextrous Strategy New Product Development Performance Combinative Capabilities Absorptive Capabilities
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