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Structural Differentiation and Ambidexterity: The Mediating Role of Integration Mechanisms

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TLDR
The findings suggest that the previously asserted direct effect of structural differentiation on ambidexterity operates through informal senior team and formal organizational integration mechanisms, and contributes to a greater clarity and better understanding of how organizations may effectively pursue exploration and exploitation simultaneously to achieve ambideXterity.
Abstract
textPrior studies have emphasized that structural attributes are crucial to simultaneously pursuing exploration and exploitation, yet our understanding of antecedents of ambidexterity is still limited. Structural differentiation can help ambidextrous organizations to maintain multiple inconsistent and conflicting demands; however, differentiated exploratory and exploitative activities need to mobilized, coordinated, integrated, and applied. Based on this idea, we delineate formal and informal senior team integration mechanisms (i.e. contingency rewards and social integration) and formal and informal organizational integration mechanisms (i.e. cross-functional interfaces and connectedness) and examine how they mediate the relationship between structural differentiation and ambidexterity. Overall, our findings suggest that the previously asserted direct effect of structural differentiation on ambidexterity operates through informal senior team (i.e. senior team social integration) and formal organizational (i.e. cross-functional interfaces) integration mechanisms. Through this richer explanation and empirical assessment, we contribute to a greater clarity and better understanding of how organizations may effectively pursue exploration and exploitation simultaneously to achieve ambidexterity.

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Organizational Ambidexterity: Balancing Exploitation and Exploration for Sustained Performance

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Organizational Ambidexterity: Past, Present and Future

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Exploration and Exploitation Within and Across Organizations

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CROSSROADS---Microfoundations of Performance: Balancing Efficiency and Flexibility in Dynamic Environments

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References
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Organizational structure and convergent change: explanatory factors in SMEs

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyzed the impact of organizational structure on convergent change in Bogota's SMEs and found that modifications in differentiation and formalization can explain the change in organizational structure and that centralization does not affect it.

Managing organizational learning ambidexterity: An exploratory study of Australian large service organizations

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate how leaders facilitate organizational learning ambidexterity for the innovation they are pursuing, using Crossan et al.'s (1999) 4I framework, and they find that one of the most challenging phases is in the integrating phase, which requires trade-offs, particularly in resource allocation with individuals or groups often competing for scarce resources to explore and exploit.
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The impact of it assets on innovation performance – the mediating role of developmental culture and absorptive capacity

TL;DR: Information technology has been acknowledged as a driver of innovation performance and scholars agree that the impact of IT is mediated by additional organisational factors as mentioned in this paper, however, some of these factors are not considered in this paper.
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Absorbing integration : Empirical evidence on the mediating role of absorptive capacity between functional-/cross-integration and innovation performance

TL;DR: In this article, the integration of organisational units has been extensively researched in various streams of management and organization sciences, and it is very important whenever knowledge differences have to be overco...

Types and traps: R&D consortia and developmental pitfalls.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on R&D collaboration as a strategy to solve the dilemma of exploration and exploitation, and suggest that cooperative organizations are distinguishable by their initial strategic intent, to either explore new knowledge or exploit existing capabilities, but face similar tensions described in individual organizations when attempting to simultaneously pursue high levels of both activities.
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