Sebastian Raisch

Organizational Ambidexterity: Antecedents, Outcomes, and Moderators

Organizational ambidexterity, defined as an organizations ability to be aligned and efficient in its management of todays business demands while simultaneously being adaptive to changes in the environment, has gained increasing interest in recent years. In this article, the authors review various literature streams to develop a comprehensive model that covers research into the antecedents, moderators, and outcomes of organizational ambidexterity. They indicate gaps within and across different research domains and point to important avenues for future research.

Organizational Ambidexterity: Balancing Exploitation and Exploration for Sustained Performance

Organizational ambidexterity has emerged as a new research paradigm in organization theory, yet several issues fundamental to this debate remain controversial. We explore four central tensions here: Should organizations achieve ambidexterity through differentiation or through integration? Does ambidexterity occur at the individual or organizational level? Must organizations take a static or dynamic perspective on ambidexterity? Finally, can ambidexterity arise internally, or do firms have to externalize some processes? We provide an overview of the seven articles included in this special issue and suggest several avenues for future research.

Paradox Research in Management Science: Looking Back to Move Forward

Paradox studies offer vital and timely insights into an array of organizational tensions. Yet this field stands at a critical juncture. Over the past 25 years, management scholars have drawn foundational insights from philosophy and psychology to apply a paradox lens to organizational phenomena. Yet extant studies selectively leverage ancient wisdom, adopting some key insights while abandoning others. Using a structured content analysis to review the burgeoning management literature, we surface six key themes, which represent the building blocks of a meta-theory of paradox. These six themes received varying attention in extant studies: paradox scholars emphasize types of paradoxes, collective approaches, and outcomes, but pay less attention to relationships within paradoxes, individual approaches, and dynamics. As this analysis suggests, management scholars have increasingly simplified the intricate, often messy phenomena of paradox. Greater simplicity renders phenomena understandable and testable, however, oversimplifying complex realities can foster reductionist and incomplete theories. We therefore propose a future research agenda targeted at enriching a meta-theory of paradox by reengaging these less developed themes. Doing so can sharpen the focus of this field, while revisiting its rich conceptual roots to capture the intricacies of paradox. This future research agenda leverages the potential of paradox across diverse streams of management science.

How Is Ambidexterity Initiated? The Emergent Charter Definition Process

Ambidexterity research has presented a range of structural and contextual approaches for implementing a dual orientation across organizations. Much less is known about the preceding process through which organizations decide to adopt an ambidextrous orientation. In this paper we focus on this first step-the charter definition process through which the activities and responsibilities of an organizational unit are agreed. Most prior studies implicitly assume that senior executives at some point identify the need to become ambidextrous and subsequently design supportive structures and contexts to implement their choice. Based on an inductive multilevel case study of four alliances, we show how this mandated or top-down charter definition process can be complemented with an alternative emergent or bottom-up charter definition process in which frontline managers take the initiative to adopt an ambidextrous orientation in their part of the organization. This emergent process is important because it enables frontline managers to respond in a timely manner to changing requirements of which senior executives are still unaware. We use the findings from our case study to develop potentially generalizable observations on the level of initiation, the tensions, the management approaches to deal with the tensions, and the outcomes that characterize this emergent charter definition process. We then put forward a multilevel process framework of how organizations initiate an ambidextrous orientation, and we discuss theoretical implications for the general ambidexterity literature, the nascent dynamic view on ambidexterity, and the broader research on how charters in organizations evolve.

Corporate Turnarounds: The Duality of Retrenchment and Recovery

Corporate turnaround research has described retrenchment and recovery as contradictory forces that should be addressed separately. While a few scholars have argued that retrenchment and recovery are interrelated and may have to be integrated, others have contended that such arguments are flawed since they downplay the contradictions between the two activities. In this paper, we clarify the nature of the retrenchment–recovery interrelations, as well as their importance for turnaround performance. Drawing on the paradox literature, we argue that retrenchment and recovery form a duality: they are both contradictory and complementary. Integrating the two activities allows turnaround firms to create benefits that exceed the costs of their integration, which affects turnaround performance positively. We test our arguments through an empirical study of 107 Central European turnaround initiatives and find evidence for the assumed duality between retrenchment and recovery. Our main contribution is integrating the hitherto disparate theory perspectives of corporate turnaround into an overarching framework.

How Do Firms Adapt to Discontinuous Change? : Bridging the Dynamic Capabilities and Ambidexterity Perspectives

This article develops a conceptual integration of the dynamic capabilities and ambidexterity perspectives in order to understand how firms adapt to discontinuous change. Based on three illustrative case studies, it demonstrates that it is not possible to identify a universal set of dynamic capabilities. Rather, the distinct set of capabilities required depends on which of three modes of adaptation (structural separation, behavioral integration, or sequential alternation) has been prioritized. This article contributes a contingency perspective to dynamic capability research and offers guidance to managers about the alternative approaches they could take when seeking to adapt to environmental discontinuities.

Diverging and Converging: Integrative Insights on a Paradox Meta-perspective

Paradox theory stands at an exciting moment in organization and management theory. Scholars increasingly seek out insights about the nature and management of contradictory demands to explain a wide array of organizational phenomena across multiple levels of analysis. Our two reviews in the 2016 Academy of Management Annals attest to this growing breadth and depth, each integrating and expanding related, yet different bodies of research. Schad, Lewis, Raisch, and Smith (2016) emphasize the depth of scholarship by analyzing an increasing number of paradox studies within management science. Putnam, Fairhurst, and Banghart (2016) highlight the breadth of scholarship by comparing paradoxes that emerge from multiple theories and paradigms that embrace an interdisciplinary orientation. By drawing on distinct literatures, these two manuscripts reveal diverse insights and reflections about paradoxical demands in organizations. In this integrative reflection, we juxtapose our two review articles, surface distinct assumptions and emphases, highlight complementarities, and raise questions for future scholarship. In doing so, we hope to fuel insights toward a meta-perspective on paradox.

Shaping the Context for Learning: Corporate Alignment Initiatives, Environmental Munificence and Firm Performance

This path-breaking book provides unique insights into the organisational realities of strategic reconfigurations in uncertain markets, thus advancing the dynamic capability perspective.

Dynamic Balancing of Exploration and Exploitation: The Contingent Benefits of Ambidexterity

We study the evolution of firms’ exploration–exploitation allocations and their long-term performance outcomes. Extending current ambidexterity theory, we suggest that not only firms pursuing one-sided exploration or exploitation orientations show self-reinforcing tendencies but also ambidextrous firms adopting balanced exploration–exploitation orientations. Integrating formal modeling arguments, we further propose that reinforcing ambidexterity can be good or bad for firms’ long-term performance, depending on the environment they face: In contexts characterized by incremental change, firms benefit more from the learning effects of maintaining ambidexterity, which lead to superior performance. Firms in discontinuous change contexts, however, suffer more from the misalignment that reinforcement creates, which affects their performance negatively. A longitudinal data set of global insurance firms (1999–2014) supports our arguments. Building on these findings, we reconceptualize ambidexterity as the ability to dynamically balance exploration and exploitation, which emerges from combining capability-building processes (to balance exploration and exploitation) with capability-shifting processes (to adapt the exploration–exploitation balance). We contribute to the organizational literature by developing a dynamic perspective on balancing exploration and exploitation, by clarifying the contingent nature of the ambidexterity–firm performance relationship, and by integrating and extending the ambidexterity and formal modeling perspectives on exploration and exploitation.

Wachstum umsetzen: Organisation des nachhaltig profitablen Wachstums

Der Erfolg einer nachhaltigen Wachstumsstrategie hangt masgeblich von der Umsetzung der geplanten Initiativen im Unternehmen ab. Neben der Strategie und dem Management des Wachstums kommt somit der Organisation eine zentrale Rolle im Wachstumsprozess zu. Das Fundament (die „Hardware“) einer Organisation stellen dabei die Strukturen dar. Sie sind entscheidend dafur, ob Wachstumsstrategien erfolgreich umgesetzt werden konnen. Auf der Basis der Strukturen beeinflussen eine Reihe weiterer, eher informeller Faktoren (die „Software“) den Wachstumsprozess. An erster Stelle sind in diesem Zusammenhang die Fuhrungskonzepte zu nennen. Das Fuhrungsverhalten des Managements hat einen ebenso grundlegenden Einfluss auf das Mitarbeiterverhalten wie die Personalkonzepte. Durch den gezielten Einsatz von Personalinstrumenten lasst sich wachstumsforderndes Verhalten nachhaltig starken. Abschliesend ist die Unternehmenskultur zu nennen, die eine entscheidende Wirkung auf die Wachstumsfahigkeit eines Unternehmens besitzt. Nachhaltig profitables Wachstum setzt somit eine ausgewogene Unternehmensorganisation voraus, die durch ein abgestimmtes Zusammenspiel von Strukturen, Fuhrungs- und Personalkonzepten, sowie der Unternehmenskultur erreicht wird.