A Key to Navigate Firm along the Organizational Life Cycle: Knowing the Pattern of Temporal Ambidexterity
Keywords:
temporal ambidexterity, exploitation, explorationAbstract
There are limited knowledge on the complete temporal pattern along the organizational life cycle and the barrier that must be addressed by firms in each stage to achieve organizational ambidexterity. Temporal organizational ambidexterity is defined as a sequential pursuit of exploitation (or relative stability) in the organizations in a long period, interspersed by sporadic episodes of exploration (or change). The purpose of this qualitative study is to assess the pattern and the barrier in each stage of organization life cycle when building temporal ambidexterity. This is empirical based research using qualitative method through face-to-face in-depth interviews to six CEO of various industries and various sizes in Jakarta, Indonesia using multi-case design. The study concluded that there is a specific pattern in building temporal organization ambidexterity across their organizational life cycle, Organizations need to swiftly change their focus from exploration to exploitation depends on the stage of organizational life cycle. When organizations balancing their focus on exploration and exploitation, there are several barriers must be addressed by organizations, such as trapped in status quo for well established organizations or resources limitation in small start-up organization. The benefits of this study are to build knowledge which is beneficial for top management to balance and drive the organization in each organization phase. It is also beneficial for public institutions such as government or universities and supporting business organizations such as consultants or social business organizations to play the suitable role in each stage along the organizational life cycle.
Keywords – temporal ambidexterity, temporal ambidexterity, exploration, exploitation
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