How Does Ambidexterity Strategy Promote the Interplay between Formal and Informal Structures

Abstract

Previous research focused on organizational formal and informal structure concerns more about the structural antecedents. Therefore, conceptual and empirically validated understanding about organizational formal and informal structure is very scarce. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by investigating the impact of strategic antecedents on interplay between formal and informal networks in organizations, delivering three contributions to theory and empirical research on ambidexterity: first, by showing the strategic antecedents of the interplay of formal and informal networks, second, by clarifying the effect of strategic antecedents and third, by giving a new interdisciplinary systemic perspective to analyze above organization structural issues based on complexity theory. For this purpose, we surveyed and collected 120 whole networks in enterprise organizations. We tested our model using regression analyses in Stata as well as social network analyses in Ucinet. Findings indicate that ambidexterity strategy exerts inverted U-shaped effects on different interplay between formal and informal networks. The paper's theoretical contributions and empirical results increase our understanding about interplay between formal and informal structure and about how strategy affect it.