Managing Persistent Tensions on the Frontline: A Configurational Perspective on Ambidexterity

• Author: Sebastian Raisch,Alexander Zimmermann,Laura B. Cardinal
• Published date: 01 July 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12311
• Date: 01 July 2018

Managing Persistent Tensions on the Frontline: A

Configurational Perspective on Ambidexterity

Alexander Zimmermann, Sebastian Raisch and

Laura B. Cardinal

University of St. Gallen; University of Geneva; University of South Carolina

ABSTRACT Ambidexterity research has noted that firms’ simultaneous pursuit of exploration

and exploitation causes organizational tensions that are difficult to resolve. To make these

tensions manageable, scholars have generally suggested that senior managers take the central

role in designing organizational solutions, such as the structural separation or contextual

integration of the exploratory and exploitative tasks. Yet, in an inductive study of ten

corporate innovation initiatives, we find that our informants assigned far less importance to

the senior managers’ initial design choices than to the frontline managers’ subsequent

configurational practices. Frontline managers used these practices to constantly adapt and

align their initiatives’ organizational contexts, which allowed them to cope with persistent

exploration-exploitation tensions in their daily business activities. Based on these empirical

insights and drawing on paradox theory, we develop a configurational perspective on

ambidexterity, where frontline managers play a more central, proactive, and strategic role

than purported by the established design perspective on ambidexterity.

Keywords: ambidexterity, exploitation, exploration, frontline managers, organization design,

organizational paradox, qualitative research

INTRODUCTION

Ambidexterity, the ability to explore and exploit simultaneously, is a fundamental driver

of firm renewal and long-term performance (O’Reilly and Tushman, 2008; Raisch and

Birkinshaw, 2008). This is because a one-sided focus on exploration (i.e., creating new-

to-the firm capabilities) may enhance firms’ ability to renew their knowledge bases, but

can also trap them in an endless cycle of search and unrewarding change (Volberda and

Lewin, 2003). Conversely, a one-sided focus on exploitation (i.e., leveraging existing

firm capabilities) may enhance short-term performance, but can also result in

Address for reprints: Alexander Zimmermann, Institute of Management, University of St. Gallen, Dufour-

strasse 40a, 9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland (alexander.zimmermann@unisg.ch)

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C2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

Journal of Management Studies 55:5 July 2018

doi: 10.1111/joms.12311

competency traps, as firms lose their ability to respond to change (Ahuja and Lampert,

2001). Empirical studies have found rich evidence that links ambidexterity to higher

firm growth (He and Wong, 2004), firm performance (Lubatkin et al., 2006), and

business-unit performance (Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004).

While ambidexterity may be beneficial, reconciling exploration and exploitation is

challenging (March, 1991), because the two activities have contradictory organizational

requirements regarding structures (O’Reilly and Tushman, 2008), contexts (Gibson and

Birkinshaw, 2004), cultural foci (Carmeli and Halevi, 2009), target systems (Cardinal,

2001), and monitoring systems (McGrath, 2001). Duncan (1976), who first coined the

term ambidexterity, suggested that exploration benefits from organic designs, while

mechanistic designs support exploitation. Given these organizational tensions, research-

ers have developed a range of comprehensive organizational solutions. These solutions

either focus on the structural separation of the exploration and exploitation tasks into

differentiated units (Raisch and Tushman, 2016; Tushman and O’Reilly, 1996), or on

the integration of the dual tasks within a single unit with an ambidextrous context (Car-

meli and Halevi, 2009; Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004).

Despite this variety of organizational solutions, the ambidexterity literature relies on

the common assumption that senior managers are the key decision makers who set the

direction, design organizational solutions to address the exploration-exploitation ten-

sion, and guide these solutions’ organizational implementation (Gibson and Birkinshaw,

2004; Smith and Tushman, 2005). In contrast, frontline managers only play a tactical

role, following the senior managers’ guidance and the direction they set through the

chosen organizational solution. The resulting image is one of frontline managers as

uninfluential, peripheral, and reactive implementers, who are expected to explore and/

or exploit, but are not involved in the development of ambidextrous strategies and the

design of ambidextrous organizational solutions.

However, there is reason to believe that this view of frontline managers is not totally accu-

rate. In a recent inductive study of four product development alliances, Zimmermann et al.

(2015) found that frontline managers play a more proactive role in initiating ambidextrous

strategies. This finding is in line with Burgelman’s (1983) notion of frontline managers’ auton-

omous strategic behaviour and Floyd and Lane’s (2000) insight that lower-level managers do

not merely follow top-down direction, but also engage in bottom-up experimentation and

adaptation. Accordingly, we assume that ambidexterity may not arise directly from senior

executives’ design choices, but may also require frontline managers who actively shape organ-

izational systems and processes to reconcile exploration-exploitation tensions. The purpose of

this study is therefore to explore how frontline managers shape, or contribute to shaping,

their organizational contexts to deal with the tensions that ambidexterity creates.

Given the lack of prior research on frontline managers’ particular role, we used

inductive methods (Eisenhardt, 1989; Glaser and Strauss, 1967) to examine ten corpo-

rate innovation initiatives at three multinational firms. We focused on initiatives that

were launched to implement an ambidextrous strategy of either combining product

exploration with market exploitation (i.e., a product development strategy), or market

exploration with product exploitation (i.e., a market development strategy). These forms

of cross-functional ambidexterity (i.e., combinations of exploration and exploitation

across the product and market functions) are particularly close to the frontline (Voss and

740 A. Zimmermann et al.

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C2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies