An empirical examination of vacillation theory

Research summary : Since Nickerson and Zenger (2002) proposed how vacillation may lead to organizational ambidexterity, large‐sample empirical tests of their theory have been missing. In this paper, we empirically examine the performance implications of vacillation. Building upon vacillation theory, we predict that the frequency and scale of vacillation will have inverted U‐shaped relationships with firm performance. We test our hypotheses using patent‐based measures of exploration and exploitation in the context of technological innovation and knowledge search. Managerial summary : Firms often shift their focus on technological innovation and knowledge search from seeking new and novel knowledge (i.e., exploration) to extending and refining existing knowledge (i.e., exploitation) or vice versa. We examine how the frequency and scale of firms vacillating between exploration and exploitation may affect their performance. We find that both too infrequent or too frequent changes and a too small or too large scale of changes are not desirable. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

齐头并进：悖论式领导对员工创新行为的影响

基于悖论理论和社会学习理论,探讨了悖论式领导如何影响员工创新行为。通过对279份领导—员工配对数据进行分析发现:悖论式领导对员工创新行为有显著的积极影响;个体双元性在悖论式领导与员工创新行为之间起中介作用;员工悖论思维不仅调节了悖论式领导与个体双元性之间的关系,还进一步调节了悖论式领导通过个体双元性影响其创新行为的间接效应,即相对于悖论思维低的员工,悖论思维高的员工更有可能从悖论式领导行为获得有益影响,同时表现出高水平的探索活动和利用活动,进而创新行为也有所提升。结论丰富了有关悖论式领导的实证研究,同时,为将悖论理论引入组织实践奠定理论基础。     

基于AMO理论的人力资源管理实践对情境双元性影响机制研究

文章把AMO理论应用于人力资源管理影响机制研究,试图揭示人力资源管理通过作用能力、动机和机会来影响情境双元性的机制。首先介绍了AMO理论及其在情境双元性和人力资源管理研究领域的应用情况;其次通过对前人观点的整合构建了一个基于AMO理论的人力资源管理影响情境双元性的模型;最后借助这一模型,系统地探讨了人力资源管理通过知识整合能力、自主性动机和网络中心度影响情境双元性的过程。     

Exploratory and exploitative OFDI from emerging markets: Impacts on firm performance

This study identifies exploratory and exploitative OFDI as two distinct approaches for emerging market (EM) firms to overcome their liability of foreignness in overseas markets. It assesses the performance impacts of both types of OFDI through investigating three sets of questions. (1) What are the differential impacts of exploratory and exploitative OFDI, and how long do they persist? (2) How do industry factors in the home country, including technological turbulence and competitive intensity, moderate these effects? And (3) how can firms balance these two types of OFDI across time? Based on multi-sourced data of 766 Chinese firms during 2008–2015, the results show that both types of OFDI promote performance, yet the positive effect of exploratory OFDI lasts longer than that of exploitative OFDI. Moreover, technological turbulence strengthens the effect of exploratory OFDI and weakens that of exploitative OFDI, but competitive intensity strengthens the effect of exploitative OFDI only. Finally, sequential ambidexterity improves firm performance through exploratory‒exploitative OFDI process.     

Managing for competency with innovation change in higher education: Examining the pitfalls and pivots of digital transformation

Digital transformation recently converged on organizations as a new paradigm—a must-have exemplar—to enable competitive advantage. While the effects of digital transformation and their analytics, along with platform technologies, are becoming pronounced in companies, there is still a need to examine their implications on higher education. In light of the dynamics of digital transformation, how can higher education better manage the shift toward newer competencies and the need for innovation presented by the emergence of digital technologies? In this article, I examine the issues around the need for this balance—often defined in strategy as ambidexterity, or the need to address both competency with innovation—by outlining the historical trajectories that led to this problem in higher education, identifying three common pitfalls that higher education programs and administrators face, and tying these issues to higher education’s absorptive capacity. To resolve these pitfalls, this article builds upon absorptive capacity frameworks for education practitioners and strategies as a prospective change management tool.     

Organizational Ambidexterity and Innovation Performance: The Moderating Effect of Entrepreneurial Orientation

The influence of organizational ambidexterity on innovation and the growth of enterprises has gradually become an important research topic in the field of strategic management and organization theory. This paper builds up a theoretical framework of the relationship between organizational ambidexterity and innovation performance with regards to corporate entrepreneurship orientation. We select 175 companies from high and new technology industries in China’s three large cities, Beijing, Tianjin and Dalian, as samples to carry out an empirical test. We find that the balance and complement of organizational ambidexterity are positively correlated with the innovation performance of enterprises; a corporate entrepreneurial orientation has a significantly moderating effect on the relationship between the balance dimension of organizational ambidexterity and innovation performance, yet it has no significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between the combined dimension of organizational ambidexterity and innovation performance.     

Predictive and effectual decision-making in high-tech international new ventures – A matter of sequential ambidexterity

This study investigates the international opportunity exploration and exploitation processes of high technology international new ventures (INVs) operating in the global medical devices sector. Drawing upon the effectuation and causation perspectives, we contribute to the micro-foundations of international entrepreneurship research in the early innovation development space by focusing on decision-making logics of techno-entrepreneurs of INVs. Specific focus is afforded to the phases of their exploration and exploitation of international opportunities leading to international new venture creation. In the pre-start-up and start-up stages of international new ventures, we find that sequential ambidexterity applies to how the subject firms manage the exploration and exploitation of opportunities in the delivery of their innovations to global markets.This research advances prior international entrepreneurship studies by focusing on the opportunity and innovation processes on the individual level. We identify different decision-making logics in the different phases and contrary to earlier findings in the international entrepreneurship (IE) area, we found causation logic to dominate the initial stages of exploration and effectuation logic, in the latter stages. Prior commercial experience presented itself as a key determining factor in the decision-making path chosen by international techno-entrepreneurs. Our study further extends the view of organizational ambidexterity by offering empirical insights into the relevance of sequential ambidexterity for understanding the processes of innovation exploration and exploitation in high-tech INVs and the decision-making logics driving these processes.     

Strategic ambidexterity and performance in international new ventures

We drew on the literature on ambidextrous organizations to propose that international new ventures (INVs) that concurrently pursue paradoxical pairs of strategies—known as the capability of strategic ambidexterity—can achieve superior performance. These paradoxical strategies are: (a) few investments and many countries, and (b) standardization and innovation. Our hypotheses were tested using data from 70 Canadian INVs. This is the first study that attempts to theoretically and empirically link ambidexterity and INV performance. Our findings suggest that INVs that are capable of pursuing and implementing paradoxical strategies achieve superior performance over those lacking such capability. Copyright © 2008 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

组织惯例复制的情境嵌入——基于组织双元性的视角

组织惯例复制作为一种价值创造的战略日 益受到学界的关注,但情境与惯例的互动博弈而引致的复制低效或失效则成为当前“复制困境”理论与实践的关键议题。传统研究着重从外部情境切入,保持对惯例复制的宏观层面分析,本研究则将组织惯例复制视为一种内生性政治进程,强调个体机构和管理的自由裁量权等内源性情境要素的作用机理,由此尝试揭示惯例复制微观机制进程中的情境嵌入机理。本文首先对组织惯例复制的情境依赖机制进行了梳理,指出内部情境嵌入是组织惯例复制的核心,而后引入全新的分析单位——特定业务单元,以展示和刻画复制进程中的“组织情境魔力”,进一步以“理性计算还是情感耦合”和“高管团队介入还是放任”作为业务单元特性维度表述了惯例复制过程中的情境差异性。区分并阐述了惯例复制的两种形态:精准的完全复制和适应性的漂移复制,阐述了两种形态的惯例复制在不同情境机制下对利用性能力和探索性能力的差异性匹配需求,然后结合组织双元性能力培育的四种途径创建了一个二维四象限的组织惯例复制模型,实现了结构双元、情景双元、领导双元和集成双元与组织情境(业务单元特性)的匹配适应。