Re-Framing Ambidexterity: A Multi-Level Processual Approach (WITHDRAWN)

Organizational ambidexterity has garnered a great deal of interest among strategy and management researchers. The metaphor of ambidexterity has been used to describe how organizations simultaneously exploit existing competencies while exploring new opportunities. This duality creates a number of tensions and paradoxes. Extant research on ambidexterity argues that these can be resolved through careful management of an organization’s structure or culture. While the shortcomings of structural and contextual approaches in achieving ambidexterity have been recognized, ambidexterity is still conceptualized as a managerial issue and treated as a static phenomenon, with little or no influence from individuals and groups, or the external environment. We propose a multi-level processual model, which integrates micro, meso and macro levels of analysis and re-frames ambidexterity as a dynamic process. Focusing on multiple levels, we portray ambidexterity as a dynamic process that is not only created and sustained by ...