Tightrope Walking - Ambidextrous Balancing

Abstract

This paper was created on the basis of the paper 'Two strong organizational hands to bring innovation out', written for and presented at the Symorg 2011 conference. Innovation is a major force in economic growth. No one argues about its importance, but when it comes to practice, innovation is often considered to be expensive, not always profitable or necessary for success. Our goal is to promote ambidexterity in domestic literature as a way to support and protect inventions and innovative processes within the organization. Although 'Ambidextrous organization' is not a new concept, and its importance has been noted across the fields of organizational theory, organizational behavior, strategic management, innovation and technology management, organizational learning and adaptation, in Serbian literature it is not sufficiently represented and used by people who lead our organizations - Serbian managers. We argue that ambidextrous organization might be a beneficial concept in a long term for organizations in the unstable environment. This paper describes organizational conditions and procedures for achieving organizational ambidexterity. As a back-up for this paper, besides the literature, we used examples of successful foreign ambidexterity practices. The dominant theoretical nature of this paper is, at the same time, its biggest limitation.