| Περίληψη: | In the modern highly competitive business environments innovation research has flourished as the need of organizations to develop new products, to compete intensively and to perform their tasks adequately has become vital (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1995; Damanpour, 1991). This continuous change leads firms to confront with the tension of exploring new opportunities or exploiting current competencies (Floyd & Lane, 2000; Lavie, Stettner, & Tushman, 2010). March’s (1991) “ambidexterity” premise refers to the simultaneous pursuit of these contrasting activities (exploration and exploitation). Specifically, firms seek to adjust to the turbulent environmental conditions through exploring new ideas, products and/or services while simultaneously developing their existing products, markets and competences (Benner & Tushman, 2003; Jansen, Van Den Bosch, & Volberda, 2006). Several literatures have increasingly argued about the antecedents of exploration and exploitation and their impact to firms’ ambidexterity as well as the relationship between ambidexterity and firms’ financial performance (He & Wong, 2004; Jansen, Volberda, & Van Den Bosch, 2005a). This doctoral study copes with the antecedents of firms’ ambidextrous orientation and the firm-level ambidexterity-financial performance relationship. Through the use of hierarchical regression modeling, the results of the empirical research at a sample of 133 top performing Greek companies show that: 1) top managers’ creative self-efficacy positively affects firms’ ambidextrous orientation, 2) top managers’ learning goal orientation positively impacts firms’ ambidextrous orientation, 3) top managers’ performance goal orientation negatively influences firms’ ambidextrous orientation, 4) firms’ external knowledge flows positively affect firms’ ambidextrous orientation, 5) firms’ innovation & flexibility climate positively impacts firms’ ambidextrous orientation, 6) firms’ social capital is not associated with firms’ ambidextrous orientation, 7) firms’ organizational capital positively influences firms’ ambidextrous orientation, 8) firms’ participative decision making positively affects firms’ ambidextrous orientation, 9) the complementary effect of the simultaneous pursuit of a differentiation and a low-cost strategy negatively impacts firms’ ambidextrous orientation, 10) firms’ ambidextrous orientation is positively related to firms’ financial performance and that, 11) Firm size moderates the relationship between firms’ ambidextrous innovation orientation and its subsequent financial performance in such a way that this positive effect is increased as size increases. Overall, these findings offer important contributions to organizational ambidexterity literature, by indicating new antecedents of firms’ ambidexterity and a positive relationship of ambidexterity and firms’ financial performance.
|
|---|
