Professional Documents
Culture Documents
split into distinct business units (Ebben & Johnson, 2005). Thus, if an organisation is of
medium to large sized, it will benefit from an ambidextrous structure. However, the culture of
an organisation will affect the extent to which ambidexterity will benefit the firm.
Structured ambidexterity will produce firms that possess multiple cultures. This arises as a
result of the multiple business units that operate with different tasks. Tushman & OReilly
(1996) identify that these subcultures are both simultaneously tight and loose. They are tight
since the corporate culture encourages innovation through openness, autonomy, initiative and
risk taking while also being loose through the variation in the expression of these values.
While companies encourage autonomy in their employees to boost innovation, this subculture
model allows businesses to centralise any business unit in order to achieve business goals
when required (Tushman & OReilly, 1996). Successful structurally ambidextrous firms will
also possess a common culture that links the multiple business units together. The common
culture is crucial to integrate the various business units and to encourage information and
resource sharing. O'Reilly & Tushman (2011) also highlight the importance of a common
culture as leaders who developed a clear vision and a common identity in an organisation
were more likely to have a successful ambidextrous organisational structure.
In contrast, contextual ambidexterity will produce firms that have a single culture. This is due
to exploratory and exploitative activities being integrated into an employees job and
responsibilities, which removes the need for multiple business units which would segment the
common culture (Wang & Rafiq, 2012). Gibson & Birkinshaw (2004) note that the attributes
of context influence performance through the development of ambidexterity (p. 214) where
culture is a component of context. As contextual ambidexterity is a more integrated model of
ambidexterity in comparison to structured ambidexterity, developing contextual ambidexterity
will require a significantly longer time period (Ghoshal and Bartlett, 1994) as the
development of the contextually ambidextrous structure is more organic and individually
motivated as opposed to being implemented by top management and more formal which are
associated with a structured ambidextrous model (Gibson & Birkinshaw, 2004).
For an organisation to be successful in implementing ambidexterity, it must first decide which
form of ambidexterity would like to implement. Contextual ambidexterity is regarded as
superior to structural ambidexterity as it prevents fragmentation of an organisations culture,
strategy and processes and has no communication lag in comparison to structured
ambidexterity, but takes longer and is more challenging to implement (Wang & Rafiq, 2012).