Organisational Ambidexterity - Example

Organisational Ambidexterity Name Course Lecture Date Introduction Organisational ambidexterity has over time gained a lot of attention and a great number of researchers in knowledge management and organisational management are studying it. Organisational ambidexterity is commonly defined as the ability of an organisation to be efficient and aligned with its day to day management of the various business demands and at the same time ensuring that it has adapted to the changes that are occurring in the environment (Gibson & Birkinshaw, 2004; Lin, Haibin, & Demirkan, 2007). The term organisational ambidexterity was first coined by Duncan 1976; nevertheless March 1991 is the one who is greatly credited for generating and developing greater interest on this subject and most especially the late 20th century and the early 21st century. Ambidexterity in the organisation is usually achieved through the balancing of exploitation and exploration and it in away allow occurs to be both adaptable and creative while also relying much on the already proven business methods. Organisational ambidexterity has gained a lot of recognition since almost all organisations have to deal with and balance between outwardly contradictory tensions that is evident in the organisation as the business environment becomes more and more dynamic (Nonaka, Toyama & Byosiere, 2001). The need for organisational ambidexterity Every organisation operating in today’s business world needs to have set its bets and mostly when it comes to the development of services, products , processes as well as their business models and this is mainly done with the aim of ensuring that they have a cash flow in the future (Andrew & Sirkin 2006). Based on these organisations are now placing their bets in two common ways and mostly depending on the level of innovation that is currently being pursued that is the more dramatic and breakthrough innovations and modest incremental innovations. The ultimate performance of organisations that laid great emphasis on small innovations in the traditional organisations visas the radical innovation are usually found to have a direct impacts when it comes to issues related to organisational management practices and design arrangements that are followed when building management models. There seems to be an urgent need for ambidexterity since it has been found that by attaining the characteristics of ambidexterity organisations, the organisation are able to outperform the other traditional organisations since there have the ability of cross fertilising their ideas. In relation to this, the sheer structure that is mostly related to ambidexterity organisations ensures that integration of various business concepts such as resource allocation, expertise and talent and mostly on the lines that traditional organisations adopted, but in a similar way the organisational separation usually enables the development of new and unique technologies, strategies, structures and processes as well as nurture a different culture (Gupta, Smith & Shalley 2006). This clearly explains the reasons why in the traditional organisations the already established units tend to focus their energies on refining their products and they do not get overwhelmed by the idea of innovation. This characteristic encourages exploration and exploitation so as to make the organisation ambidextrous. Challenges facing organisational ambidexterity The broad dilemma that is currently facing managers and most organisations in that they are supposed to swallow the world of evolutionary changes so as to augment the fit of strategy and this needs to be done in the short. Also in the long term they are supposed to disrupt or in a way destroy the faith that has made the organisation to be successful over the years. This concept means that the managers will be shifting between business period that are characterised by incremental innovation and relative stability and they are also supposed to spend a considerable part of their time grappling with the ever changing revolutionary trends. These demands seem very hard to handle based on the fact that they in a way require organisational managers to destroy what has already been created in the aim of rebuilding or recreating a total new organisation through renewal (Tushman & O’Reilly 1996). This clearly depicts why organisational managers need to be ambidextrous and they should also at all times pursue exploration and exploitation concurrently. Other major challenges facing ambidextrous organisations are that leadership challenge. Leaders are supposed to find the most applicable means and ways so as to be able to compete successfully in increasing the fit among structure, strategy, culture and processes and at the time ensuring that they simultaneously prepare the organisation for any inevitable disruptions that may be brought about by the discontinuous environmental adjustment. Unfortunately, focusing on one set skill can only lead to short term benefits and long term failure. This clearly depicts why managers need to do the two things at the same period of time and thus the urgent need of being ambidextrous (Tushman & O’Reilly 2004). The other major challenge is to relate to balancing and it seems to a core managerial challenge. An ambidextrous organisation requires business executives to be able to explore new ideas and opportunities while at the same time they are working diligently so as to exploit the existing capabilities in the organisation and in reality few organisations are able to balance between the two. A great number of successful organisations seem to be adept when it comes to refining their current products that they are offering to their customers but they tend to falter when implementing and developing new services and products (Gupta, Smith & Shalley 2006). A good example of companies who failed to adapt the market changes in the right time are Boeing and Kodak. Based on these Kodak was a leader when it came to analogue photography but due to its slow adoption of technological change they have not been able to leap or benefit much from the digital cameras which are currently in use. Boeing on the other hand was a major leader in the commercial aircraft business, the company has experienced a number of difficulties in its defence contracting businesses and based on its poor adaptation to change is having stumbled due to stiff commission that has been posed by Airbus. Another major challenge is that the failure of achieving breakthrough innovation and at the same time making steady improvements to the already existing business. For a number of decades various scholars have developed theories that try to explain how they can be solved. Some have even argued that there exists no concise way of organisation moving out from their current conundrum which were core to the establishment of these companies based on the fact that the organisations may lack when it comes with the flexibility of exploring new and advanced territories (Lubatkin et al. 2006). Potential benefits of organisational ambidexterity Organisational ambidexterity seems to have a number of potential benefits to organisations in various aspects. A major benefit is the in its ability to balance between exploitative and explorative processes, and the major outcome or benefit that is closely related to ambidexterity is innovation since it requires both aspects that is exploitative and explorative aspects (Lubatkin et al. 2006). Innovation mainly related to the sequence in which activities of a new element are implemented and introduced into the social unit mainly with the aim of attracting certain benefits for the unit, part of it or to the wider society. In addition to the above mentioned benefit ambidexterity can also in a way promoted other positive outcomes in an organisation besides from innovation. A lot of literature that relates to ambidexterity states that the interaction between the exploiters and explorative strategies seems to be closely related to the growth rates of sales in a company and also the imbalance between the exploiters and explorative strategies can also affect the organisation in a negative way in that the organisation may not achieve the desired sales growth rate (Lin, Yang & Demirkan 2007). Another notable benefit of ambidextrous organisation is related to stronger financial performance. In relation to this company that combine exploration and exploitation tend to achieve more benefits as compared to those companies which choose to adept exploitation or exploration only (Katila & Ahuja 2002). Ultimately, ambidextrous organisations in a way demand skill that seems to be very different from the ones that are required in traditional organisations. This for an organisation to be able to compete in the future they need to be ambidextrous. Another closely associated benefit of ambidextrous organisation is more related to gaining a competitive advantage over their competitors in the market. An organisation which is ambidextrous tend to have a greater advantage in the market since they are able to use technology to deliver advanced and unique products to the customers as compared to their counterparts who rely heavily on traditional means (Jones 2002). Through ambidextrous, organisations are able to differentiate themselves from other companies, though they may be operating in the same industry. In today's business environment where there is continued knowledge renewal is seen as the basis of gaining competitive advantage, it is essential for local at all levels to manage their internal data and information for them to be able to augment their capacity of learning. This enables these companies to stage hyper competition in the first changing business environment characterised by globalisation and advancements in information technology (Jones 2002). Another potential benefit of ambidextrous organisations is that through innovation they are able to create economic value and increase in efficiency of producing current goods and services and improving the products and service quality or creating new products which are in line with the market demands (Jansen & Volberda 2005a). In more precise terms, ambidextrous organisation impacts on competitive advantages of organisations through continuous improvements in quality, production efficiencies and creating new products to capture new and emerging markets. The other advantage is that through the adoption of ambidexterity, organisations can be able to enjoy first mover advantage through the use of exploratory innovations and it may be able to protect their innovation from any form of imitation by their competitors. Ways of attaining of organisational ambidexterity There exist a number of ways in which organisation can be able to attain organisational ambidexterity. The first is through the diagnosis of the organisational context. This can be achieved best by the use of surveys in the aim of getting a fix on how employees in the organisation view the current levels of space, stretch, support and boundaries. In respect to this a greater number of people can participate in the survey so as to achieve accurate and concise results (He & Wong 2004). Another way of achieving organisational ambidexterity is through the determination of the direction of change that is needed in the organisation and also the identification of the levers of the change and they ought to be applied in a consistent manner (Cao, Gedajlovic & Zhang 2009). A good example of this is at Renault and Scotch Inc. in Renault the key levers of the change were more related to recruitment, capital allocation process and the articulation as well as development of a clear and concise strategic vision. For Scotch Inc. the key levers where knowledge transfer, professional development and participative planning process. Thus the more consistently that these were applied, it would be easier for the organisation’s employees to articulate the changes that are occurring in their respective organisations. Thus based on this consistency seems to be a crucial aspect since in realty organisational context cannot be able to create high performance but it enables individuals level ambidexterity and this leads to higher performance as time goes by (Cao, Gedajlovic & Zhang 2009). Additionally, contextual ambidexterity is usually viewed as a core factor in driving leadership as opposed to being leadership driven. Ambidexterity is not as a result of formal structures or through vision statements of the organisational leaders, rather it is usually achieved due to the creation and development of a supportive environment through which people are offered with opportunities to make individual choices relation to where and how they can focus their energies (Birkinshaw & Gibson 2004). In this sense leadership seems to be a characteristic that is displayed by almost everyone in that organisation. The impulsion in the direction of ambidexterity is at times motivated by top down initiatives, but the core aim is to tolerate leadership to emerge from almost all the units and levels and based on this ever-present, emergent leadership will ultimately be intrinsically ambidextrous. Another way of achieving organisational ambidexterity is through the communication of the strategy to all employees in the organisation. In relation to this, the further the individual is from the organisational hierarchy the lower they will be when it comes to rating of the organisation's ambidextrous characteristics (Benner & Tushman 2003). In instances when an organisation wants to be ambidextrous it will need to first explain the associated benefits of organisational context clearly and consistently to all employees in the organisation. Thus every employee must have a clear understanding of the initiatives that are already in place so as to promote high performance context and the reasons behind it. The last way of attaining organisational ambidexterity is by viewing structural and contextual ambidexterity as complements. Structural separation at times seems to be very effective though it is not usually the best long term solution (Benner 2002). In reference to these companies such as Royal Sun Alliance, BAT and the British Airways at a time created separate corporate ventures during the period of technological boom. These new ventures were critical in designing and nurturing a new business idea. The issue here was that since the new corporate ventures seems to be disconnected from the core business many of them became isolated and they were unable to make any noteworthy contribution to their parent companies (Barker, Patterson & Mueller 2001). Thus contextual ambidexterity ought to be viewed as a complement of structural solutions rather than the alternative. Though structural solutions are at times necessary they should be viewed as being temporary and in this seems they ought to be viewed as a means of giving the new and advanced initiatives the resources and space to start off. Afterwards the new idea needs to be reintegrated into the business. Conclusion Based on the above discussion organisations need to be ambidextrous for them to be able to tap both the short term and long term success. Earlier researchers argued that the two concepts could not be implemented in the same organisation at the same time and thus they proposed the implementation of one and then changing to the other but this discussion has proved otherwise and it proposes that the two ought to take place simultaneously for an organisation to be able to reap the associated benefits. There seems to be an urgent need for ambidexterity since it has been found that by attaining the characteristics of ambidexterity organisations, the organisations are able to outperform the other traditional organisations since there have the ability of cross fertilising their ideas. The ambidextrous organisation also has some perceived benefits such as competitive advantage and first mover advantage. The challenges that are being faced by ambidextrous organisation need to be resolved so as to ensure that full benefits of the organisational designs. In conclusion mangers ought to follow the above stated measures so as to attain ambidextrous organisation in their organisations. References Andrew, J. & Sirkin, H. 2006, Payback. Reaping the Rewards of Inno­vation. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. . Barker, V., Patterson, P & Mueller, G 2001, Organisational cause and strategic consequences of the extent of top management team replacement during turnaround attempts. 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