A Socio‐Psychological Perspective on Team Ambidexterity: The Contingency Role of Supportive Leadership Behaviours

• Author: Konstantinos C. Kostopoulos,Oli R. Mihalache,Alexandros Papalexandris,Justin J. P. Jansen
• Date: 01 September 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12183
• Published date: 01 September 2016

A Socio-Psychological Perspective on Team

Ambidexterity: The Contingency Role of Supportive

Leadership Behaviours

Justin J. P. Jansen, Konstantinos C. Kostopoulos,

Oli R. Mihalache and Alexandros Papalexandris

Erasmus University; University of Piraeus; Wilfrid Laurier University; VU University Amsterdam;

Athens University of Economics and Business

ABSTRACT In addressing the notion of team ambidexterity, we propose that socio-

psychological factors (i.e., team cohesion and team efficacy) may help team members to

resolve paradoxical challenges and to combine exploratory and exploitative learning efforts.

In addition, we theorize that senior executives may play an important role in facilitating the

emergence of ambidexterity at lower hierarchical levels. In doing so, we develop a multilevel

contingency framework and propose that the effectiveness of teams to achieve ambidexterity

is contingent upon supportive leadership behaviours at the organizational-level. Using

multilevel, multisource, and temporally separated data on 87 teams within 37 high-tech and

pharmaceutical firms, we not only reveal how team cohesion and efficacy may matter for the

emergence of team ambidexterity but also show that the effectiveness of supportive leadership

behaviours from senior executives varies across cohesive and efficacious teams.

Keywords: multilevel model, supportive leadership, team ambidexterity, team cohesion,

team efficacy

INTRODUCTION

Many of today’s organizations utilize organizational teams to conduct knowledge-

intensive work such as developing novel technologies, generating new products and

delivering customer value in new ways (Haas, 2010). Moreover, such teams are also

responsible for streamlining work practices and refining existing knowledge to imple-

ment quality improvements and to satisfy existing customer needs (Gilson et al., 2005).

Indeed, research has shown that new product development (NPD) teams need to enact

Address for reprints: Justin J. P. Jansen, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Burge-

meester Oudlaan 50, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands (jjansen@rsm.nl).

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

Journal of Management Studies 53:6 September 2016

doi: 10.1111/joms.12183

opposing learning demands when developing new products and services over time

(Sethi and Sethi, 2009; Sheremata, 2000; Tushman et al., 2010). Although scholars

have shown that the ability of NPD teams to engage in exploration and exploitation

simultaneously – referred to as team ambidexterity – may contribute to higher team

effectiveness and performance (Gilson et al., 2005; Haas, 2010), these teams are still

faced with self-reinforcing tendencies and inherent tensions between the two (March,

1991). For example, in the pursuit of developing new insights about novel products or

technologies, NPD teams may be distracted from fine-tuning existing knowledge to

satisfy customer needs (Kyriakopoulos and Moorman, 2004). Although it is intuitively

challenging, a thorough understanding of how and under what conditions organizational

teams may be able to resolve inherent tensions and achieve ambidexterity is still lacking

(O’Reilly and Tushman, 2004; Raisch et al., 2009). The present study, therefore,

advances a multilevel contingency framework on the notion of team ambidexterity and

contributes to prior studies in three important ways.

First, we extend theoretical argumentations and insights about the importance of con-

textual issues for understanding ambidexterity (Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004), and

examine the emergence of ambidexterity at the team-level of analysis. In order to man-

age trade-offs between exploration and exploitation, scholars have typically argued that

organizations may rely on highly differentiated but weakly integrated units (Jansen

et al., 2009; Tushman and O’Reilly, 1996). More recently, however, scholars have

started to debate about alternative approaches to enable the emergence of ambidexter-

ity at lower hierarchical levels (Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004; Haas, 2010). Based on

team learning theory (Edmondson, 2002), we conceptualize team ambidexterity as the

extent to which teams engage in exploratory and exploitative learning simultaneously,

as their members search for, experiment with and develop new knowledge and skills

while they concurrently refine, recombine and implement existing ones (Gilson et al.,

2005; Kostopoulos and Bozionelos, 2011). By focusing attention on a team’s ability to

combine exploratory and exploitative learning demands, we argue that the notion of

team ambidexterity provides valuable new insights into how organizations may develop

novel technologies and products while implementing improvements on existing ones.

Second, we adopt a socio-psychological perspective on organizational ambidexterity

and argue that team members’ shared perceptions about cognitive, emotional or affec-

tive states (Marks et al., 2001; Mathieu et al., 2008) explain their ability to deal with

conflicting learning goals and to facilitate the co-existence of contrasting mental frames

and agendas (Smith and Tushman, 2005). Building on social identity and social

cognitive theory (Bandura, 2001; Tajfel and Turner, 1986), we examine two salient

team-level socio-psychological states: team cohesion and team efficacy. Whereas team

cohesion reflects the shared attraction to or liking for the group (Evans and Jarvis,

1980), team efficacy refers to a group’s collective belief that it can successfully perform a

specific task (Bandura, 1997). Our socio-psychological perspective on ambidexterity

sheds new light on how emergent team states may help team members to manage trade-

offs between exploratory and exploitative learning demands.

Third, senior executives play an important role in ambidextrous organizations

(Lubatkin et al., 2006; Mihalache et al., 2014; Tushman and O’Reilly, 1996). Even

though scholars have speculated about their role in recognizing and promoting new

940 J. J. P. Jansen et al.

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