Scholars have suggested that we need a better understanding about the drivers and performance implications of managers’ ambidexterity. By building a human resource management perspective on managers’ ambidexterity, this article not only examines organizational and functional tenure as important antecedents, but also provides novel insights into the contextual conditions under which the ambidextrous behavior of managers contributes to individual performance. Based on survey research among managers of two large firms, our results indicate that while organizational tenure contributes to managers’ ambidextrous behavior, functional tenure actually limits such complex behavior. Our study also reveals how managers’ performance results from the interaction between their ambidextrous behavior and the uncertainty as well as the interdependence of their work context. Results indicate that managers’ ambidexterity contributes to individual performance in more uncertain and interdependent work contexts. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In this study we integrate insights from ‘top‐down’ and ‘bottom‐up’ traditions in organizational change research to understand employees’ varying dispositions to support change. We distinguish between change initiation and change execution roles and identify four possible role configurations in which top managers (TMs) and middle managers (MMs) can feature in change. We contend that both TMs and MMs can play change initiation and/or change execution roles, TMs and MMs have different strengths and limitations for taking on different change roles, and their relative strengths and limitations are compounded or attenuated based on the specific configuration of change roles. We subsequently hypothesize employee support for change in relation to different TM‐MM change role configurations. Our findings show that change initiated by TMs does not engender above‐average level of employee support. However, change initiated by MMs engenders above‐average level of employee support, and even more so, if TMs handle the change execution.

Traditional sources of sustainable competitive advantages are very rare in today's heterogeneous and hyper-competitive global business environment. This article identifies and illustrates three dynamic capabilities—sensing local opportunities, enacting global complementarities, and appropriating local value—by which MNEs are able to operate successfully across emerging and established markets. For MNEs in these markets, strategic agility is a meta-capability that enables them to create and deploy these three capabilities in a dynamic balance over time. Doing so demands embracing the tensions between these capabilities effectively.

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Drawing on corporate entrepreneurship (CE) and social network research, this study focuses on strategic renewal as a form of CE and examines the impact of boundary-spanning at top and middle management levels on business units' exploratory innovation. Analyses of multi-source and multi-level data, collected from 72 top managers (TMs) and 397 middle managers (MMs) operating in 34 units of a multinational organization, indicate that TMs' boundaryspanning is positively related to units' exploratory innovation, but also has a cascading effect on MMs by increasing their perceived role conflict. MMs' role conflict is negatively related to units' exploratory innovation and thus offsets some of the benefits gained through TMs' boundary-spanning activities. Taking a configurational perspective on social exchanges at multiple levels, we show that role conflict is reduced by overlapping boundary-spanning ties among TMs and MMs. Surprisingly, MMs' boundary-spanning does not relate to exploratory innovation. Our study shows that with regard to boundary-spanning, a top-down approach to CE as strategic renewal may be most effective because TMs play a key role in driving exploratory innovation. However, TMs need to be aware of the cascading social liabilities of their boundary-spanning behavior and ensure MMs develop similar networks. We advance ongoing debates in studies about CE and social networks by providing empirically validated insights into who drives strategic renewal and by uncovering the benefits and costs of social exchanges for strategic renewal. Furthermore, we uncover potential causes of mixed findings in network theory research and highlight a remedy to social liabilities.

Research Summary This paper examines to what extent family firms rely on imitation when deciding on foreign investment growth, highlighting the role of mimetic isomorphism and social categories. We propose that family firms pursue trait‐based imitation to reduce uncertainty in follow‐up foreign direct investment (FDI), and test our predictions on a large sample of German family firms. We find that family firms imitate successful peers that are also owned by a family. A family firm's tendency to imitate is strengthened during the initial years in a foreign market or when the firm is publicly listed. Performance below or above social aspiration strengthens or weakens imitation, respectively. We discuss the implications for research at the nexus of foreign investment growth, social categories, and the pursuit of imitation by family firms. Managerial Summary Experience in a foreign market helps firms to reduce uncertainty in follow‐up FDI. Besides experience gathered from own investments, firms might also learn from investment decision of peers in this market. By examining the foreign investment strategies of family firms over time, this study identifies mimetic behavior in follow‐up FDI. The inclination to imitate visible, family‐owned peer firms is stronger during the initial years in a foreign market, when underperforming relative to competitors, and when there are outside shareholders. Family firm managers rely less on imitation when outperforming their competitors.

In this study, we investigate the nature of dynamic capabilities and use a fine-grained measurement to test how centralization, routinization, and formalization relate to the underlying learning components of dynamic capabilities. We find that the effects of centralization, routinization, and formalization are broadly similar for almost all components of dynamic capabilities, and that only a few show a different pattern. Centralization and routinization are negatively related to dynamic capabilities, formalization has a significantly positive effect. We provide insights into the role of managerial practices by explaining variation among the learning components of dynamic capabilities. This has implications for the nature and development of dynamic capabilities as well as for the routine versus deliberate learning debate.

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