Organizational ambidexterity – the results of bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Purpose: Organizational ambidexterity is a promising concept in management science. It is defined as the ability of a company to leverage existing resources by increasing the productivity of current products and services while exploring development niches. The aim of the article is to identify the leading research areas within organizational ambidexterity based on bibliometric analysis carried out on a collection of scientific articles and conference papers indexed in the Scopus database. Findings: Data visualisation was prepared using VOSviewer software (version 1.6.15), which allows analysis of the frequency of keywords in the analysed dataset and, at the same time, an analysis of their co-occurrence with other keywords. The article presents visualisations in the form of both a label view and a density view. Using the VOSviewer software, a summary of 2255 keywords was generated based on the uploaded set of publications and a dictionary allowing the combination or deletion of individual terms. The final map consisted of 36 keywords grouped into six clusters. The theoretical contribution of the paper consists in the identification of six clusters revolving around the issue of organisational ambidexterity. The clusters refer to 1) the relationship between organisational ambidexterity and a company’s ability to innovate, 2) organisational ambidexterity and dynamic capabilities, 3) perception of organisational ambidexterity as a useful framework of product development 4) perception of organisational ambidexterity as a framework to support human resource management, 5) the notion of exploitation and exploration and 6) contextual ambidexterity. Research limitations/implications: The analysis revealed a clear trend away from analysing structural and temporal ambidexterity in companies towards attributing more importance to individual ambidexterity which may be an interesting subject of future research inquiry. A limitation of the study is that it was based on publications from a single database, therefore it is interesting to analyse comparisons between other databases such as Web of Science or IEEE. Originality/value: The article fills the cognitive gap in demonstrating the latest trends in the research field. The findings could serve as a guide for researchers who aim for better understanding of the main progress and promising research trends in the field of organisational ambidexterity. Keywords: bibliometric analysis, organisational ambidexterity, VOSviewer software. Category of the paper: Research paper.