A cross-level investigation of exploration and exploitation activities at employee level

Abstract

For long-term success, companies are in need to adapt to technological and environmental change. More and more view organizational ambidexterity, the exploration of new opportunities and the exploitation of existing capabilities, as a promising approach to tackle this challenge. While prior research focused on organizational ambidexterity, present research has shifted the focus towards individual ambidexterity. Despite the important role of individuals for achieving ambidexterity and performance at a firm level, the understanding of how exploration of new opportunities and the exploitation of existing capabilities is triggered at an individual level and how it subsequently affects overall performance is still sketchy at best. Based on data from 415 employees, results from structural equation modeling show that both organizational architecture and organizational context can be used to induce individual ambidexterity. Furthermore, the findings of this study also confirm positive performance effects of individual ambidexterity across different organizational levels, namely the team and the department level.