The Impact Of Collectivism And Centralization On Ambidextrous Innovation

Several empirical studies (both domestic and overseas) suggest that ambidextrousinnovation is beneficial to the firm’s short-term competitive advantages and long-termperformance. Extant literature has identified two main approaches to achieveambidextrous innovation internally, one is structure-based solution and the other iscontext-based solution. However, studies on contextual ambidexterity is limited, and westill lack understandings on what kind of firms can build the specific context which isessential in dealing with the tensions between explorative innovation and exploitativeinnovation. Moreover, as both organizational structure and organizational context are thefundamental aspects of organizational attributes, the question of how the interaction oforganizational structure and context affects ambidextrous innovation still remain unclear,and call for more studies.Based on existing research, this paper attempts to extend the contextual ambidexterityliterature from the perspective of organizational culture, and examines the role ofcollectivistic culture in promoting ambidextrous innovation and the moderating effect ofcentralization on the relationship between collectivism and ambidextrous innovation. First,literature review on ambidextrous innovation, collectivism and centralization has beenconducted, and two hypotheses have been developed on the basis of organizationallearning theory. Then, by a sample of102manufacturing firms from the high-techindustrial clusters of Hubei Province, this study empirically test the relationship betweencollectivism and ambidextrous innovation and the moderating role of centralization on thisrelationship. The empirical results show that collectivism is significantly and positivelyrelated to ambidextrous innovation, and centralization negatively moderates therelationship between collectivism and ambidextrous innovation.This paper makes some extension on the contextual ambidexterity literature by lookingat a more specific dimension (i.e., collectivistic culture) to solve the tensions betweenexplorative and exploitative innovation. The empirical examination on the collectivismand ambidextrous innovation may help to build a close theoretical linkage between organizational culture and innovation management research. By providing evidence onhow the interaction of organizational structure and organizational culture affectsambidextrous innovation, this paper provides further insights into the solutions ofambidexterity. In addition, this paper enriches the discussion of organizational tensions inambidextrous innovation and organizational learning, as it sets out from the specifictension (discipline versus passion) to propose appropriate schemes for enablingambidexterity.