P revious research focuses on firm and business unit level ambidexterity. Therefore, conceptual and empirically validated understanding about ambidexterity at the individual level of analysis is very scarce. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by investigating managers' ambidexterity, delivering three contributions to theory and empirical research on ambidexterity: first, by proposing three related characteristics of ambidextrous managers; second, by developing a model and associated hypotheses on both the direct and interaction effects of formal structural and personal coordination mechanisms on managers' ambidexterity; and third, by testing the hypotheses based on a sample of 716 business unit level and operational level managers.Findings regarding the formal structural mechanisms indicate that a manager's decision-making authority positively relates to this manager's ambidexterity, whereas formalization of a manager's tasks has no significant relationship with this manager's ambidexterity. Regarding the personal coordination mechanisms, findings indicate that both the participation of a manager in cross-functional interfaces and the connectedness of a manager to other organization members positively relate to this manager's ambidexterity. Furthermore, results show positive interaction effects between the formal structural and personal coordination mechanisms on managers' ambidexterity. The paper's theoretical contributions and empirical results increase our understanding about managers' ambidexterity and about how different types and combinations of coordination mechanisms relate to variation in managers' ambidexterity.

This paper develops and tests hypotheses on the influence of a manager's knowledge inflows on this manager's exploration and exploitation activities. Based on a survey among managers of a leading electronics firm, the findings indicate, as expected, that top-down knowledge inflows of a manager positively relate to the extent to which this manager conducts exploitation activities, while they do not relate to a manager's exploration activities. Furthermore, as expected, bottomup and horizontal knowledge inflows of a manager positively relate to this manager's exploration activities, while they do not relate to a manager's exploitation activities. We contribute to current literature on exploration and exploitation by focusing on the manager level of analysis, and by adding the importance of knowledge flow configurations to the literature on the impact of organizational factors upon exploration and exploitation. , 2006). However, there is a lack of conceptually and empirically validated understanding about exploration and exploitation at the manager level of analysis. This is quite surprising as previous research in organizational learning (Crossan et al., 1999;Vera and Crossan, 2004), strategy research (Burgelman, 1983b(Burgelman, , 1991Floyd and Lane, 2000;Rajagopalan and Spreitzer, 1996;Rosenbloom, 2000; Trispsas and Gavetti, 2000) and technological innovation (Duncan, 1976;Tushman and O'Reilly, 1996) indicates that firm or unit level exploration and exploitation to a large extent originate in the exploration and exploitation activities of their managers. These studies indicate that insight into managers' exploration and exploitation activities and 4 into how these activities may be influenced, benefit our understanding about how to build exploration and exploitation within a business-unit or firm.Taking a knowledge perspective (Grant, 1996;Gupta and Govindarajan, 2000;Kogut and Zander, 1992;Schulz, 2001), this paper investigates how the acquisition of knowledge from other persons and/or units in the same organization by a manager, influence this manager's exploration and exploitation activities. On the basis of studies of intra-organizational knowledge flows (Gupta and Govindarajan, 2000;Schulz, 2003), we will conceptualize and operationalize knowledge acquisition by a manager in terms of a manager's knowledge inflows. Previous research indicates that knowledge acquisition is an important explanatory factor for exploration as well as exploitation related activities within a firm. In the area of technological innovation, scholars have examined the impact of knowledge acquisition by firms, as reflected in citation patterns within patent applications, in terms of the extent to which innovations tend to be incremental or radical (e.g. Katila and Ahuja, 2002;Nerkar, 2003;Rosenkopf and Nerkar, 2001). Studies in the field of organizational learning indicate that the acquisition of knowledge is a primary mechanism by which not only firms but also organization members learn from each other (Fiol & Lyles, 1985...

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.

Research on strategic human resource (HR) management and organizational ambidexterity has assumed that organizational ambidexterity originates from operational managers that pursue both exploratory and exploitative activities. Yet, multilevel insights are absent about how and through which mechanisms HR practices may actually facilitate operational manager ambidexterity and how their ambidexterity may result into organizational ambidexterity. Our multisource and multilevel data from 467 operational managers and 104 senior managers within 52 firms reveals that the top-down effects of ability- and motivation-enhancing HR practices on operational manager ambidexterity are partially mediated by their role breadth self-efficacy and intrinsic motivational orientation. Furthermore, we find that the bottom-up relationship between operational manager and organizational ambidexterity is contingent on firm opportunity-enhancing HR practices. With that, our study provides important new multilevel insights into the effectiveness of strategic HR systems in supporting individual and organizational ambidexterity.

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.