Business Digitization’s Edifying Effects on a Firm’s Ambidexterity

Abstract

Improving a firm’s simultaneous capabilities to exploit the existing opportunities whilst also exploring future opportunities is critical for catalysing a firm’s ambidexterity and sustainability. In that context, this research evaluates how business digitisation edifies a firm’s ambidexterity in the increasingly more discontinuous modern business environment. Using a qualitative-Delphi Method, the study diagnoses the perceptions of about twenty expert panelists from a cross-section of twenty enterprises in Aberdeen-Scotland on how digitised enterprise systems are often utilised to discern how the existing as well as future trends can be maximised to leverage a firm’s ambidexterity and sustainability. Findings indicated some of the businesses to take the initiatives to leverage their exploitation and exploration capabilities. However, it was still highly evident from most of the narratives that as most of the businesses focused on leveraging their existing state of performance, cost savings or the use of rational plans that only aim to achieve short-term business quests, it tends to undermine data optimisation in the simultaneous improvement of a firm’s exploitation and exploration capabilities. This is because most quests for optimising the digitised business systems or to undertake the required changes to leverage ambidexterity are often constrained by a combination of different heterogeneous internal business conditions that either cause low investments in digitisation or inflexibility that constrains change. It is not only the level of digitisation’s optimisation which is low, but also most businesses’ greater preponderance to focus on exploitation at the expense of exploration. Such business approach was found to undermine most quests for bolstering a firm’s ambidexterity. Considering that this area had not been explored by most of the previous studies, the study concludes with certain propositions that can enrich the existing ambidexterity theories by offering new insights on how digitisation highlights a new paradigm that can be optimised to bolster a firm’s ambidexterity.