A process for building inter-organizational contextual ambidexterity

Abstract

Structured Abstract:Purpose -This study discovers a three-step process for building contextual ambidexterity into interorganizational IT-enabled service processes through developmental interventions. Design/methodology/approach -A longitudinal action research project was conducted. The empirical study consisted of three consecutive developmental interventions to support the collaborative development effort of an IT company and its customer network to efficiently serve their present and future customers. The data consists of process modeling and simulation workshop discussions, interviews, observation, and archival data. The development effort was studied for over a year. Findings -The study shows that the three developmental interventions acted as a process for balancing the exploration-exploitation tension in inter-organizational service processes. The sequential interventions facilitated the studied organizations in (1) crossing the inter-organizational knowledge boundaries and creating shared domain knowledge, (2) creating common understanding of the collaborative IT-enabled service processes, and (3) co-developing the coordination mechanisms that are essential for the continuous exploration and exploitation of the new ideas in the future collaborative service processes. These three steps built capacity for the inter-organizational management system to achieve synergies between goals, resources, and activities in the inter-organizational collaboration. Originality/value -The study contributes to the understanding on the process of building interorganizational ambidexterity. The study presents a three-step process for building inter-organizational contextual ambidexterity into the IT-enabled service processes through developmental interventions. Research on inter-organizational contextual ambidexterity is combined with research on coordination and knowledge management.

Facilitating Organizing in Business Processes

“…The findings help understand how business processes can be defined through the interplay between process models and conversations and how a facilitator can support this through communication activities. The findings give support to the observation by Lavikka, Smeds and Jaatinen [6] that interventions can support the creation of shared understanding about a collaboration process and the co-development of coordination mechanisms. We looked at the phenomenon on a micro-level and add that facilitation of conversations can support organizing by helping collaborators to align attitudes and activities and to define the collaborative business process.…”

“…Co-creation also enables sustainability [5]. External facilitators can provide an important support for the collaborative development effort [6]. However, little is known about the communicative process of organizing in this context and how it can be managed and facilitated.…”

Knowledge transfer within relationship portfolios: the creation of knowledge recombination rents

“…The firm in this case engages in scanning activities and aims to discovering novel knowledge previously not available for the company and opportunities to get access to it. March's (1991) framework is widely applied to alliance and network studies (e.g., Lavie & Rosenkopf, 2006;Lavikka, Smeds, & Jaatinen, 2015;Yamakawa, Yang, & Lin, 2011).…”

“…However, as proposed, a balance view seems to be the best solution: a bundle of partners who can really sustain the implementation of any strategic action (Batocchio et al, 2016), coupled with a larger in number "periphery" represented by new relationships to sound the competitive arena and track new innovation leads (Capaldo, 2007;Tiwana, 2008) (proposition 2.c). Thus, for relationship managers of established companies, the suggestion is to carefully map the whole set of firm's relations to evaluate those more strategic to be kept stable, while continuously engaging with new explorative collaborations (Lavikka et al, 2015).…”

“…In this case, strong relations will definitely help in implementing and executing such actions (Batocchio et al, 2016) since the adaption capability in the knowledge transfer will be higher (Williams, 2007) with minor coordination costs (White & Siu-Yun Lui, 2005;Williamson, 1991) (proposition 3). Contrary, due to the intrinsic uncertainty of an Knowledge transfer within relationship portfolios: the creation of knowledge recombination rents 21 exploratory project, the firm and its relationship managers should engage with a plurality of subjects that gradually will be evaluated and in case replaced (White & Siu-Yun Lui, 2005) if not of a transversal utility among different knowledge platform (Lavikka et al, 2015) (proposition 4).…”