Walking a Tightrope in Organisational Ambidexterity

Sammanfattning: Title: Walking a Tightrope in Organisational Ambidexterity: Ambidextrous Micro-Balancing as a Prerequisite for Managerial Success Authors: Tizian Hoppen & Susanne Jeppsson Supervisor: Merle Jacob Submission Date: 27th of May 2018 Keywords: Organisational Ambidexterity, Exploration versus Exploitation, Efficiency and Flexibility, Managerial Challenges, Strategic Management Purpose: Responding to a well-defined research gap, the purpose of this study is to identify challenges that arise from organisational ambidexterity and to assess implications for managers derived from these challenges. Research Question: What are the challenges managers face in sustaining organisational ambidexterity? Methodology: A qualitative, multiple-case study design has been crafted to capture managers’ perceptions of the challenges they face and how they deal with them across companies from different industries and sizes. The empirical results are based on assessing qualitative interviews as well as organisational documents. Findings: To succeed in balancing the overarching objective in organisational ambidexterity between exploration and exploitation, managers across different hierarchy levels are challenged to strike multiple balances in their daily work. Managers need to balance a) communication types to resolve insufficient communication of the strategy, b) generalists and specialist knowledge to resolve workforce scarcity, c) entrepreneurship and routines to resolve slow and inflexible processes and finally, d) competition and cooperation to resolve conflicting objectives between units. Contributions: By developing the concept of Ambidextrous Micro-Balancing, this study contributes to the rich field of organisational ambidexterity on the managerial level; as a prerequisite for pursuing an ambidextrous strategy in teams, units and as a company.