THUNDERBIRD INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS REVIEW

Call-for-Papers - Special Issue

 

Ambidextrous Organizations in and from Emerging Markets

 

Guest Co-Editors:

 

Timeline:

 

AIMS AND SCOPE

The aim of this special issue is to bring together scholars from various disciplines in business and management studies, in order to extend existing theoretical frameworks on organizational ambidexterity and encourage new research in under-researched EM contexts. We welcome both qualitative and quantitative studies, along with state of art conceptual (literature review) papers.  Due to the relative uniqueness and newness of the topic, case studies (single in-depth cases or comparative cases) are particularly welcome. We invite research focusing on, but not limited to, the following topics:

 

 

Overview and Purpose of Special Issue:

Emerging markets (EMs) are increasingly playing an important role in a globalized economy. The increased importance of emerging market multinationals (EMNCs) is evident in recent academic discourse.

 

The extant literature on organizational ambidexterity portrays a variety of sectors (traditional, high-tech) and methodological settings, and the empirical findings to date are mixed (e.g. Junni et al., 2013; Junni et al., 2015). Through our call for papers we thus attempt to fill a specific gap in this context.  More specifically, we aim to solicit studies exploring the aspects of internationalization by ambidextrous organizations in and from emerging markets.

 

Empirical research shows that some  EMNCs are ambidextrous organizations, able to simultaneously pursue two disparate, and, at times, seemingly contradictory strategies (Luo and Rui, 2009).

 

Organizational ambidexterity is an emerging field of research which has significant implications on the evolving leadership and HRM literature (Stokes et al., 2017; 2018). A review of the extant literature reveals that organizational ambidexterity has been studied primarily in the context of firms operating within the developed market (DM) context (O’Reilly and Tushman, 2013).

 

In this vein, utilizing ten in-depth case studies of European firms’ corporate innovation initiatives, Zimmermann, Raisch, and Cardinal (2018) explored how frontline managers shape their organizational contexts to reconcile exploration/exploitation tensions. They found that frontline managers play a more central, proactive, and strategic role with respect to organizational ambidexterity through configurational practices than assumed by senior executives’ initial design choices.

 

Another study by Jansen et al. (2016) examined - via a socio-psychological perspective - the contingency role of supportive leadership behaviors on the emergence of team ambidexterity, and concluded that supportive behaviors of senior executives may not be always beneficial but rather a double-edged sword for team-level psychological attributes.

 

Examples of organizational ambidexterity studies can also be found in the International Business (IB) realm with more inclination toward culturally-diverse and internationalization-focused contexts. For example, employing case studies to examine ambidexterity as a dynamic capability in the globalization of Swedish firms, Vahlne and Jonsson (2017) indicated that the dynamic capability of ambidexterity adds to the explanatory power of the Uppsala globalization process model.

 

Given the current state of the literature on organizational ambidexterity, there is a gap in the understanding of what constitutes organizational ambidexterity in  EMNCs. Exceptions are studies undertaken by Luo and Hui (2009), Winterhalter et al. (2016), Rao-Nicholson et al. (2016), Malik et al. (2017), Stokes et al. (2017), Chen et al. (2018) and Yu et al. (2018). However, these studies are exploratory in nature and it would be helpful to complement the existing findings with in-depth and specific studies on dynamics, development and management of organizational ambidexterity in the EM context. It is further important to mention that EMs are not a homogenous group of countries, and there are significant variations across EMs (Karolyi, 2015). Moreover, the role of leadership and HRM in the context of culture and internationalization has been argued to be important determinants of organizational ambidexterity (Malik et al, 2017, Pereira and Malik, 2018; Budhwar et al., 2020). However, these determinants have been rarely investigated within an EM context. Some studies which have addressed the role of ambidexterity in the EM context are mostly focusing on internationalization or merger and acquisition topics (e.g. Rao-Nicholson et al., 2016; Chebbi et al., 2017).  In addition, so far, extant research on ambidextrous organizations has focused primarily on more well-known EMs, in particular, China and India. Keeping in view this gap in the extant literature, there is a need to enhance our understanding of the dynamics of ambidextrous organizations in EMs by empirically focusing on the under-researched ‘culture and internationalization’ context of other EM countries in Africa, Latin America, transitional periphery of EU and less researched Asian countries (e.g. Hsu, Lien and Chen, 2013; Martin, Javalgi and Cavusgil, 2017; Pereira, et al, 2018).

 

References:

 

Budhwar, P., Pereira, V., and Temouri, Y. (2020). Investigating challenges faced by EMNCs and MNCs in the MENA region. International Studies of Management & Organization. Forthcoming.

 

Chebbi, H., Yahiaoui, D., Vrontis, D., & Thrassou, A. (2017). The impact of ambidextrous leadership on the internationalization of emergingmarket firms: The case of India. Thunderbird International Business Review, 59(3), 421-436.

 

Chen, M., Yang, Z., Dou, W., & Wang, F. (2018). Flying or dying? Organizational change, customer participation, and innovation ambidexterity in emerging economies. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 35(1), 97-119.

 

Hsu, C. W., Lien, Y. C., & Chen, H. (2013). International ambidexterity and firm performance in small emerging economies. Journal of World Business48(1), 58-67.

 

Jansen, J. J., Kostopoulos, K. C., Mihalache, O. R., & Papalexandris, A. (2016). A sociopsychological perspective on team ambidexterity: The contingency role of supportive leadership behaviours. Journal of Management Studies, 53(6), 939-965.

 

Junni, P., Sarala, R.M., Taras, V., & Tarba, S.Y. (2013). Organizational ambidexterity and performance: A meta-analysis. The Academy of Management Perspectives27(4), 299-312.

 

Junni, P., Sarala, R. M., Tarba, S., Liu, Y., & Cooper, C. (2015). The role of human resource and organizational factors in ambidexterity. Human Resource Management54(S1), S1-S28.

 

Karolyi, G. A. (2015). Cracking the emerging markets enigma. Oxford University Press.

 

Luo, Y., & Rui, H. (2009). An ambidexterity perspective toward multinational enterprises from emerging economies. Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(4), 49-70.

Malik, A., Pereira, V., & Tarba, S. (2017). The role of HRM practices in product development: Contextual ambidexterity in a US MNC’s subsidiary in India. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2017.1325388

 

Malik, A., Sinha, P., Pereira V., and Rowley, C. (2017). Implementing global-local strategies in the offshore outsourcing industry: Creating an ambidextrous context through strategic choice and HRM. Journal of Business Research. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.09.052

 

Martin, S. L., Javalgi, R. G., & Cavusgil, E. (2017). Marketing capabilities, positional advantage, and performance of born global firms: Contingent effect of ambidextrous innovation. International Business Review26(3), 527-543.

O'Reilly III, C. A., & Tushman, M. L. (2013). Organizational ambidexterity: Past, present, and future. Academy of Management Perspectives, 27(4), 324-338.

 

Pereira, V., Mellahi, K., Temouri, Y., Patnaik, S., and Roohanifar, M (2018). Investigating dynamic capabilities, agility and knowledge management within EMNEs - Longitudinal evidence from Europe. Journal of Knowledge Management. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-06-2018-0391

 

Rao-Nicholson, R., Khan, Z., Akhtar, P., & Merchant, H. (2016). The impact of leadership on organizational ambidexterity and employee psychological safety in the global acquisitions of emerging market multinationals. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 27(20), 2461-2487.

 

Stokes, P., Moore, N., Smith, S. M., Larson, M. J., & Brindley, C. (2017). Organizational ambidexterity and the emergingtoadvanced economy nexus: Cases from private higher education operators in the United Kingdom. Thunderbird International Business Review, 59(3), 333-348.

Stokes, P., Smith, S., Wall, T., Moore, N., Rowland, C., Ward, T., & Cronshaw, S. (2018). Resilience and the (micro-) dynamics of organizational ambidexterity: implications for strategic HRM. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 1-36. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2018.1474939

 

Vahlne, J. E., & Jonsson, A. (2017). Ambidexterity as a dynamic capability in the globalization of the multinational business enterprise (MBE): Case studies of AB Volvo and IKEA. International Business Review, 26(1), 57-70.

 

Winterhalter, S., Zeschky, M. B., & Gassmann, O. (2016). Managing dual business models in emerging markets: an ambidexterity perspective. R&D Management, 46(3), 464-479.

Yu, X., Meng, X., Chen, Y., Chen, Y., & Nguyen, B. (2018). Work-family conflict, organizational ambidexterity and new venture legitimacy in emerging economies. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 135, 229-240.

 

Zimmermann, A., Raisch, S., & Cardinal, L. B. (2018). Managing persistent tensions on the frontline: A configurational perspective on ambidexterity. Journal of Management Studies, 55(5), 739-769.



Best regards,

Suzy

Suzy Howell
TIBR Managing Editor  | Case Series Manager
Research Editor
Thunderbird School of Global Management - ASU

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