General Managerial Skills and Organizational Ambidexterity

Abstract

Using insights from Upper Echelon Theory and human capital literature, the study establishes a link between the general managerial skills and organizational ambidexterity. I theorize that executives with higher general managerial skills gathered over their life time work experience have an inverted U-shaped relationship with organizational ambidexterity. Using a sample of firms from Drugs and Medical Device industries from 1993-2003, I find the support of the hypothesis. I find that general managerial skills positively moderate the relationship between organizational ambidexterity and firm performance. The results contribute to our understanding of antecedents of organizational ambidexterity as well as to the Upper Echelon Theory.