Culture, Ambidexterity, and Performance : A Team-Level Study

Drawing on ‘the competing values perspective,’ we examine cultural profiles as an important contextual antecedent of ambidexterity, defined as an organization’s capability to simultaneously pursue exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation, at a team level. We suggest that a balanced organizational cultural profile oriented toward both innovation/relation and task/hierarchy tends to achieve a higher level of ambidexterity. We further propose that ambidexterity mediates the relationship between a team’s cultural features and its performance. The findings from our research reveal that the different cultural profiles identified by our analysis lead to different innovative capabilities and that combination-oriented team ambidexterity is more effective in enhancing team performance. By providing a comprehensive model in which the antecedent and the consequence of team ambidexterity are explained with emphases on team culture, this study discusses its contribution and managerial implications in conclusion.