Are Managers Motivated to Explore in the Face of a New Technological Change? The Role of Regulatory Focus, Fit, and Complexity of Decision‐Making

• Author: Justin J. P. Jansen,Saeed Khanagha,Luca Berchicci,Saeedeh Ahmadi
• Date: 01 March 2017
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12257

Are Managers Motivated to Explore in the Face of a

New Technological Change? The Role of Regulatory

Focus, Fit, and Complexity of Decision-Making

Saeedeh Ahmadi, Saeed Khanagha, Luca Berchicci and

Justin J. P. Jansen

Erasmus University, Rotterdam; Radboud University Nijmegen; Erasmus University, Rotterdam; Erasmus

University, Rotterdam

ABSTRACT We develop a psychological perspective on managers’exploration orientation.Our

study suggeststhat the regulatory focus of managersmay in different ways, impacttheir orientation

toward search,risk-taking, and experimentation.Moreover, we argue that these relationships are

contingentnot only on the extent to which the organizational contextfits with the motivational

dispositionof managers, but also on the complexity of decision-making. Using anexperimental

setting, we findthat managers’ regulatory focus affectstheir willingness to experimentwith a wide

range of alternatives and to deviate from existingbest practices. Moreover, thepromotion focus of

managers heightenstheir exploration orientationin an organizational context withpromotion-

focused cuesin highly complex decision-making.This study has important implications for our

understandingof managers’ exploration orientation under conditionsof complexity.

Keywords: complexity, exploration, motivation, organizational context, regulatory focus

theory

It is almost a truism that organizations need to move beyond exploitative activities by

attempting to achieve breakthroughs by means of exploratory behaviour. Although both

exploration and exploitation are important for an organization’s survival, they are not

always equally important (Puranam et al., 2006). For instance, scholars have suggested

that, in a rapidly changing environment, the need for internal variety and effective

adaptation necessitates an increased focus on exploration (Gupta et al., 2006; McGrath,

2001). However, organizations may vary in their ability to cope with the inherent chal-

lenges of pursuing exploration alongside exploitation (Levinthal and March, 1993;

March, 1991; Tushman and O’Reilly, 1996), and studies have identified various reasons

for this. Importantly, this body of research has argued that a key role is played by

Address for reprints: Saeedeh Ahmadi, Department of Strategy Management and Entrepreneurship, Rotter-

dam School of Management, Erasmus University, Burg. Oudlaan 50, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Nether-

lands (ahmadi@rsm.nl).

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C2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

Journal of Management Studies 54:2 March 2017

doi: 10.1111/joms.12257

managers (Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004; Jansen et al., 2008; O’Reilly and Tushman,

2011). They may facilitate the coexistence of exploration and exploitation by supporting

organizational members to move away from existing routines, allocating sufficient

resources, and implementing differentiated organizational structures (Benner and

Tushman, 2003; Boumgarden et al., 2012; Jansen et al., 2016; Khanagha et al., forth-

coming). Yet, our understanding of how psychological attributes may impact managers’

orientation toward exploration is underdeveloped, and fundamental pieces are missing

(Gupta et al., 2006). In fact, despite the critical role played by managers in making deci-

sions about exploration, there is only limited research on what mechanisms may make

them more inclined to exploration (Sitkin et al., 2011). Hence, recent research empha-

sizes the need to investigate the antecedents of individual-level exploration in organiza-

tions (Mom et al., 2015). In this paper, we develop a psychological perspective on

managers’ exploration orientation, and argue that their orientation toward search,

experimentation, and deviation from current practices is shaped not only by their moti-

vational systems, but also by the fit between their motivational systems and the motiva-

tional cues present in, as well as the complexity of the decision-making context. Our

principal contributions are threefold.

First, drawing on regulatory focus theory (RFT) (Higgins, 1997), we develop a psycho-

logical perspective on managers’ exploration orientation. Research on individual-level

antecedents of exploration is scarce (Lavie et al., 2010; Laureiro-Mart et al., 2015), and

only a few earlier studies in this area have considered factors such as cognitive capabil-

ities (Laureiro-Mart et al., 2015) or access to knowledge flows (Mom et al., 2007, 2015)

without considering motivational factors. In line with research that considers regulatory

focus to be a driver of managers’ preferences and decision-making (e.g., McMullen

et al., 2009), we propose that the regulatory focus of managers – via either a promotion

focus (a sensitivity to gains and a desire for advancement and growth) or a prevention

focus (a sensitivity to losses and a desire for stability and security) – has an important

bearing on their exploratory orientation. By uncovering the overlooked motivational

drivers of exploration orientation, we address the calls to go beyond cognition, and

attend to other psychological factors in connection with strategic decision-making (see

Hodgkinson and Healey, 2011).

Second, although earlier research has looked at how regulatory focus may affect stra-

tegic actions (e.g., McMullen et al., 2009), there are still relatively few insights into how

organizational conditions may shape these effects (Lanaj et al., 2012). By using the

notion of regulatory fit, we argue that the match between motivational drivers of indi-

viduals and motivational cues provided in the organizational context has important

implications for managers’ preferences for exploration. In particular, we discuss how a

context that emphasizes gains, advancement, and hope – in contrast to contexts that

focus on obligations, possible failure, or loss – influences decision-makers differently,

depending on their regulatory focus. Moreover, we postulate that such psychological

effects may become more relevant as the complexity of the decision-making situation

increases. Our theoretical argumentation and empirical analyses suggest that the effect

of individuals’ motivational factors is not the same in all conditions and may vary

according to the organizational context and the complexity of the decision-making

210 S. Ahmadi et al.

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C2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies