Contrasting Goald - Artikel Birkinshaw & Gibson - Building ambidexterity

6 important questions on Contrasting Goald - Artikel Birkinshaw & Gibson - Building ambidexterity

How are adaptability and alignment defined in the article of Birkinshaw and Gibson?

Adaptability is the ability of an organization to move quickly toward new opportunities.

Alignment is about value creation in the short term an how activities should be coordinated.

Birkinshaw and Gibson distinguish two forms of ambidexterity: structural ambidexterity and contextual ambidexterity. What is structural ambidexterity, who connects, and what type of units are related to alignment and what to adaptability?

Structural ambidexterity is the traditional way of handling contrasting goals. Within structural ambidexterity separate structures are created for different types of activities on an organizational level.

The top management connect between them.

This results in large units focusing on alignment and small units focusing on adaptability.

Birkinshaw and Gibson distinguish two forms of ambidexterity: structural and contextual. What is contextual ambidexterity?

Contextual ambidexterity contains that the individual employees can make choices between alignment-oriented and adaptation-oriented tasks in their day-to-day work. This results in more flexible structures, paying much more attention to the human side of activities.
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What are the three commonalities among ambidextrous employees?

1. Act outside the narrow confine and take action in broader interest of the organization.
2. Employees are motivated and inform to act spontaneously without first asking for permission.
3. Encourage action that involves adaptation and alignment to the strategy.

What is context and what two dimensions are important to determine the organizational context?

Context is the invisible set of stimuli and pressures that motivate people to act in a certain way.

Dimension 1) Performance management
- This is determined by the attributes stretch and discipline. This dimension is concerned with stimulating people to deliver high quality results and making them accountable for their actions.

Dimension 2) Social support     
- This is determined by the attributes support and trust. This dimension is about the people that are provided by security and latitude they need to perform.

How to escape from suboptimal contexts?

Optimizing the other dimension.

when organizations are in a low performance context, then they should give priority to performance management, social support can follow later before burnouts come in.

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