Ambidextrous leadership. Emerging challenges for business and HR leaders

Organizational Dynamics

Volumn 40, Issue 4, 2011, Pages 326-334

  Probst, Gilbert ^a   Raisch, Sebastian ^a   Tushman, Michael L ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA   (Switzerland)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 80054842182     PISSN: 00902616     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.orgdyn.2011.07.010     Document Type: Article

References (11)

1. In this article we rely on the organizational ambidexterity concept that Michael Tushman and Charles O'Reilly proposed in their 1996 article "Ambidextrous Organizations: Managing Evolutionary and Revolutionary Change," in the California Management Review, 38(4), 8-30.
2. The emerging academic debate on ambidextrous leadership is summarized in S. Raisch, J. Birkinshaw, G. Probst, and M. Tushman, "Organizational Ambidexterity: Balancing Exploitation and Exploration or Sustained Performance," in Organization Science, 20(4), 685-695.
3. Prior studies have argued that successful new business creation requires the active involvement of multiple agents from different hierarchical levels. For example
4. see J. Cohn, J. Katzenbach, and G. Vlak's 2008 article "Finding and Grooming Breakthrough Innovators," in the Harvard Business Review, 86(10), 63-69
5. D. L. Laurie, Y. L. Doz, and C. P. Sheer's 2006 article "Creating New Growth Platforms," in the Harvard Business Review, 84(4), 80-90.
6. We rely on the distinction between managers and leaders that Abraham Zaleznik proposed in his 1977 article "Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?" in the Harvard Business Review, 55(3), 67-76.
7. For more on managerial roles, functions, skills, and the distinction between management and leadership
8. see John Kotter's 1990 book, A Force for Change: How Leadership Differs from Management (New York: Free Press) and Peter Northouse's Leadership Theory and Practice (Sage Publications, 2007). Finally, complementary leadership is a concept that has recently gained greater research attention. For a particularly interesting study, see S. A. Miles and M. D. Watkins's 2007 article "The Leadership Team: Complementary Strengths or Conflicting Agendas?," in the Harvard Business Review, 85(3), 90-98.
9. For a more detailed description of GE Money Bank's MBudget Card Initiative
10. see M. Tushman, S. Raisch, and C. Welling, "GE Money Bank: The M-Budget Card Initiative" (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Case Study, 2009). A discussion of GE Corporation's growth strategy and the related HR challenges can be found in Thomas Stewart's 2006 interview with Jeffrey Immelt, "Growth as a Process," in the Harvard Business Review, 84(6), 60-70
11. Steven Prokesch's 2009 article "How GE Teaches Teams to Lead Change," in the Harvard Business Review, 87(1), 99-106.