Ambidexterity in an organization - Essay Example

Ambidexterity requires an enormous amount of altruistic effort on the part of managers. The basic question that addresses a manager’s motivation is “What is in it for me”. Operation manager’s motivation is limited to meeting his deadline and exceeding his rated capacity to ensure that he delivers what is required, when it is required. Thus, his impetus is ensuring efficiency and maximizing capacity. While business unit managers are expected to deliver revenues that can cover pricing schedule configuration and marketing at times it can be an introduction of related products if not an entirely different set of products all together.

The survey in itself failed to take into consideration the difference in the terms of reference between operational managers and business unit managers. The level of expectation in terms of performance and output as well as the requirement and scope of the job is very wide. Operational manager’s realm of influence is only limited within his domain, its efficiency, continuity of operation during emergencies and its adherence to the quality and volume demanded by the company. Therefore an operation manager’s decision making authority is limited within his area of responsibility it would be incredulous to expect him to have dominion over other parts of the company.

An operations manager’s personal coordinating mechanism is limited to his vendors, the source department where his input is coming from, and the destination of his output. Operations managers being a service provider in a company are expected to adhere to the quality standards of the company as well as to the standard work instructions as required by their internal clients. Business unit managers are expected to be ambidextrous since their success is directly correlated to their creativity.

If operations managers are back-office and support