Ambidexterity; “How high-tech organizations balance and control their exploration and exploitation activities”
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2017-08-20
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en
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“How high-tech organizations balance and control
their exploration and exploitation activities”
Ambidextrous organizations are able to both explore to secure future viability as well as to exploit to secure current viability. Whilst exploration and exploitation are tight together in the innovation cycle, they are also contradictory. This contradiction flows from different contextual factors which steers the organization towards either exploration or exploitation. Moreover, this tension between the two innovation processes is further increased due to three trade-offs. As both exploration as well as exploitation are necessary for both short- and long-term viability of an organization, ambidexterity is of utmost importance in order to mitigate the contradiction between exploration and exploitation and provide organizations long-term competitive advantage. Nevertheless, as high-tech organizations are pushed towards exploration, how do they manage to engage enough in exploitation?
To investigate this research question two research strategies were used. First, two hypotheses needed to be tested with a quantitative survey. Next, an in-depth understanding was necessary in order to see how exploration and exploitation were handled in practice. For this an exploratory qualitative research strategy was used. More specifically, interviews were held with directors of the selected cases.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen