<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>To survive in today’s increasingly complex business environments, firms must embrace strategic paradoxes: contradictory yet interrelated objectives that persist over time. This can be one of toughest of all leadership challenges, as managers must accept inconsistency and contradictions. In this article, we develop and empirically test a set of hypotheses related to ambidexterity, a key example of a paradoxical strategy. Through our analysis of data from a survey of executive leaders, we find a link between organizational ambidexterity and strategic planning, suggesting that the complexities of navigating in explorative ventures require more explicit strategy work than the old certainties of a legacy business. We identify and discuss inherent paradoxes and their implications for firm performance in 22 industry-specific strategies, where empirical industry data shows a pattern of conflict between explorative growth strategies and exploitative profit strategies. We argue that this is just one of the inherent paradoxes in the ambidexterity construct.</p></abstract>

To survive in today’s increasingly complex business environments, firms must embrace strategic paradoxes: contradictory yet interrelated objectives that persist over time. This can be one of toughest of all leadership challenges, as managers must accept inconsistency and contradictions. In this article, we develop and empirically test a set of hypotheses related to ambidexterity, a key example of a paradoxical strategy. Through our analysis of data from a survey of executive leaders, we find a link between organizational ambidexterity and strategic planning, suggesting that the complexities of navigating in explorative ventures require more explicit strategy work than the old certainties of a legacy business. We identify and discuss inherent paradoxes and their implications for firm performance in 22 industry-specific strategies, where empirical industry data shows a pattern of conflict between explorative growth strategies and exploitative profit strategies. We argue that this is just one of the inherent paradoxes in the ambidexterity construct.

Editor, Executive and Entrepreneur

Department of Strategic Management and Globalization

Nordicom Review

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Strategic Paradoxes in the Digital Age

To survive in today’s increasingly complex business environments, firms must embrace strategic paradoxes: contradictory yet interrelated objectives that...

Editor, Executive and Entrepreneur

Publié en ligne: 19 nov. 2016

Pages: 115 - 130

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/nor-2016-0014

Mots clés
ambidexterity, leadership, strategy, paradoxes, organizational change

© 2016 Tor-Bøe Lillegraven et al., published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Editor, Executive and Entrepreneur

Publié en ligne: 19 nov. 2016

Pages: 115 - 130

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/nor-2016-0014

Mots clésambidexterity, leadership, strategy, paradoxes, organizational change

© 2016 Tor-Bøe Lillegraven et al., published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Mots clés
ambidexterity, leadership, strategy, paradoxes, organizational change