Influence of entrepreneurial ambidextrous leadership on ambidextrous innovation: An integrated model construction of ‘cognitive/affective’ composite perspective in Chinese context

Abstract

BACKGROUND: China’s 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 clearly points out that it is necessary to implement innovation driven strategy, promote enterprise technological innovation, and better play the important role of entrepreneurs in enterprise technological innovation. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore the impact of entrepreneurial leadership on enterprises’ technological innovation. OBJECTIVE: From the perspective of technological innovation stream, we divide ambidextrous innovation into mainstream innovation and new stream innovation. Integrating ambidexterity theory, innovation streams theory and cognitive affective personality system theory (CAPS), we explore the mediating mechanism of entrepreneurial ambidextrous leadership on ambidextrous innovation from cognitive path, affective path and cognitive-affective compound path. METHODS: Based on the data collected from 254 top managers in 12 provinces in China, we conducted descriptive statistical analysis, reliability and validity analysis, regression analysis and bootstrap mediating effect test on the sample data. RESULTS: Our empirical results revealed that: 1) entrepreneurial ambidextrous leadership positively related with the ambidextrous innovation; 2) organizational paradoxical cognition plays a partly mediating role between ambidextrous leadership and ambidextrous innovation; 3) organizational affective conflict plays a partly mediating role between ambidextrous leadership and ambidextrous innovation; 4) organizational paradoxical cognition negatively related with organizational affective conflict; 5) organizational paradoxical cognition and organizational affective conflict play a chain mediating role between entrepreneurial ambidextrous leadership and ambidextrous innovation. CONCLUSIONS: Combined with the cognitive affective personality system theory, our research explores the mediating mechanism of entrepreneurial ambidextrous leadership on ambidextrous innovation from cognitive path and affective path and “cognitive-affective” compound path, which not only have great theoretical contributions, but also have important significance in enterprise management practice.