Achieving Organizational Agility and Cultivating Entrepreneurial Orientation of Business Leaders through an Ambidextrous Leadership Approach: A New Perspective

Abstract

This paper explores the intricate relationship between ambidextrous leadership, agility, and innovation within the organizational context. Ambidextrous leadership involves the delicate balance of exploiting existing capabilities for efficiency while simultaneously exploring new avenues for innovation. Agility represents an organization’s capacity to adapt swiftly to dynamic environments, while innovation denotes the creation and implementation of novel ideas. This paper investigates how these three principles are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. Ambidextrous leadership serves as a foundational framework, fostering a culture that encourages agility and providing the necessary support for innovation. Agility, in turn, enables organizations to respond promptly to changing circumstances, creating an environment conducive to continuous innovation. The symbiotic relationship between these elements is crucial for organizational resilience, competitiveness, and long-term success in an ever-evolving business landscape. Understanding and leveraging the interplay between ambidextrous leadership, agility, and innovation can guide leaders in crafting strategies that promote adaptability, creativity, and sustainable growth.

1. Introduction

Today’s business ecosystem is characterized by interdependence that requires integrative and mutually adaptable abilities, and this requires understanding and skills of a leader who is able to manage well the business organization from a process approach, understand business models, manage effectively and efficiently relatively limited resources, coordinate activities, manage collaboration, communicate well, be able to answer questions, as well as provide support to customers. A leader who, on the one hand, is required to show accountability, integrity, and focus on tasks has the character of operational excellence to win the competition and is able to survive in the industry but, on the other hand, is also a leader with an entrepreneurial mindset who has the ability to identify, understand various problems, see opportunities to get out of these problems, take calculated risks, and collaborate with many parties to find solutions.

In short, in turbulent business ecosystem conditions, organizations need a leader who is able to generate ideas on how to improve existing work processes and, at the same time, lead teams to implement their ideas efficiently, controlled and risk controlled by exploitative means or approaches. Similarly, when the team he leads is facing some problems, leaders are required to find ways to overcome the weaknesses or problems they face by developing new solutions or better ideas. For an exploitative leader to lead a team according to agreed behaviors, structures, and processes in the organization, to consciously changing his behavior and having to exhibit exploratory leader behavior that encourages team members to think differently, deviate from existing patterns, and even take risks to do new things that have never been done before. The post-COVID-19 business world is increasingly showing the importance of leaders’ exploratory abilities, especially in seeking new steps, the courage to experiment, innovate, and create new creations, but they must still have exploitation capabilities that are very useful in improving efficiency, quality, productivity and fast and reliable delivery while staying focused on the targets that have been set [1, 2, 3].

2. Opening and closing leadership behavior

Leadership behavior that supports exploration is characterized as an “opening” behavior that describes a leader who always fosters an open atmosphere, an attitude that encourages experimentation, independent thinking, and challenges to existing approaches. Opening leader behavior encourages diversity, different approaches, and a critical mindset toward past practices, giving employees the freedom to take actions that improvise existing standard operating procedures and seek solutions outside the conventional norm. In contrast, for leaders in the context of exploitation, the term “closing” aptly describes the necessary behavior. Exploitation involves efficiently implementing ideas and minimizing variance. The behavior of the “closing” leader requires establishing routines, providing appropriate instructions, taking corrective actions, establishing specific guidelines, and monitoring the achievement of objectives to ensure compliance with established rules and effective use of trained competencies [4, 5].

The terms “exploration” and “exploitation” were originally defined by March in 1991 as two forms of organizational learning. Exploration is associated with increased variance, experimentation, alternative search, and risk-taking; while exploitation is associated with variance reduction, rule compliance, alignment, and risk aversion [4, 6, 7]. While “opening” and “closing” are terms used by Rosing to provide differences in behavior from a leader, where opening is an open approach that encourages an exploratory leader attitude and closing is a behavior that encourages an exploitative leader attitude [8].

Closing leader behavior means establishing routines that must be followed by subordinates and giving precise instructions on how to carry out tasks. In addition, this means determining certain work goals and drawing up tasks ahead of time. Therefore, closing leadership is defined as a series of leader behaviors that include taking corrective actions, setting specific guidelines, and monitoring the achievement of goals. Leadership behavior “closing” is defined as leader behavior that reduces variation in follower behavior by taking corrective actions, setting specific guidelines, and monitoring goal achievement [4, 9]. Ambidextrous leadership theory argues that closed leadership behavior leads to exploitative activities for its followers [10, 11, 12].

The opening leader behavior is a leader behavior that encourages employees to find solutions outside the existing habit, be critical of ways that have been done in the past, stimulate employees to experiment, provide space to think and act independently, and support efforts to challenge existing approaches. The closing behavior describes the behavior of leaders who set goals and passively monitor the achievement of goals, actively structure tasks, correct mistakes, and help complete work [13, 14, 15].

At the collective level, prospective leaders produced by the academic world or universities must be able to facilitate the innovative performance of employees who generate ideas, and therefore, the transformational leadership model that has been recognized as the best model in encouraging innovation must be a reference in the existing learning system. In other situations, at the individual level, when efficiency and awareness of the importance of Quality, Cost, and Delivery (QCD) implementation are needed to win the competition and deliver high-value product and service performance, transactional leadership is an approach that must be instilled in aspiring industry leaders. In other words, the academic world must be able to produce graduates who are able to balance current activities with new activities, who combine short-term and long-term thinking, and develop an emotionally appealing vision while still focusing on its implementation [16]. Industry needs leaders for all levels in organizations as talents who are agile in thinking; creative and innovative in action, especially in responding to fast-moving environments; dare to take risks; and have the courage to direct subordinates and team members [5].

Specifically, open leadership behaviors that encourage exploration are a set of leadership behaviors that include the encouragement to do things differently and experiment, think independently, and act on and challenge existing approaches. In contrast, the closing leadership behaviors that drive exploitation are a set of leadership behaviors that include taking corrective action, setting goals, and monitoring goal achievement. In their study, they distinguish two innovation processes, namely, the generation of ideas or creativity (exploration) and the implementation of ideas or exploitation [17, 18, 19].

In short, leadership is a complex issue. There are so many important variables in building an idea of what is meant by good leadership that it becomes impossible to develop experiments that can produce conclusive evidence on the topic. Currently, the field of leadership focuses not only on leaders but also on followers, co-workers, supervisors, work environment/context, and culture, as well as on the broader individual that encompasses a whole system of variables [19, 20].

The leadership approach that combines two different abilities as above, namely, exploratory abilities that are more opening (opening) and exploitative abilities that are closing (closing) is reminiscent of the nature of ambidexterity, namely, people who have the ability to use both hands, both right and left well balanced. This then inspired experts and researchers to use the term ambidextrous. Leadership that emphasizes the balance of exploratory and exploitative abilities, opening and closing, is then named as ambidextrous leadership [4, 21, 22].

3. Ambidextrous leadership

Ambidextrous leadership is defined by Rosing et al. as “the ability to foster exploratory and exploitative behaviors in followers by increasing or decreasing variations in their behavior and flexibly switching between those behaviors” [23, 24, 25]. Rosing et al. refer to Raisch and Birkinshaw’s research in 2008, which also discusses ambidextrous leadership that is not only limited to a balance of exploration and exploitation but also refers to several other contradictory concepts, such as incremental vs. radical innovation skills, continuity vs. change, induced vs. autonomous organizational strategy, and organic vs. mechanical organizational structure. Thus, a key feature of ambidextrous is the integration of conflicting or even conflicting activities, strategies, or features (Figure 1) [5, 26].

Figure 1.

Ambidextrous leadership.

The combination of exploration and exploitation capabilities of a leader who prioritizes optimal balance for all activities in the company’s organization in order to successfully achieve the set targets is believed to be able to contribute to the achievement of organizational agility and entrepreneurial orientation to support the company to continue to exist and even be believed to grow and sustain in the industry where the company is located [5].

Some experts discuss the possibility of tackling contradictory strategies of exploratory and exploitative organizations. They argue that it is important to clarify the question of whether exploration and exploitation are actually mutually exclusive (i.e., two ends of a continuum), or whether exploration and exploitation constitute two orthogonal (i.e., theoretically independent) dimensions. In the first case, an organization may be more exploratory or more exploitative, and the balance between exploration and exploitation will be a central part of that continuum. In the latter case, an organization may be more or less explorative and more or less exploitative, and to achieve the greatest success, it must have a high level of exploration and exploitation [27].

Ambitious leaders mean that not only must they be able to exhibit open and close leader behavior, but they must also be able to switch flexibly. In conclusion, ambidextrous leaders are leaders who are able to encourage exploration by opening up and exploitative behavior by being closed and flexibly switching between these behaviors according to the situation and the demands of their duties [13, 28]. An overview of the differences between these two behaviors is as shown in Table 1.

Opening leader behaviors	Closing leader behaviors
Allow different ways to complete a task	Monitor and control goal achievement
Encourage experimentation with different ideas	Establish fixed routines and procedures
Motivate to take risks	Take corrective action
Provide the possibility of thinking and acting independently	Control obedience to the ruler
Make room for his own ideas	Pay attention to uniform task completion
Allow errors	Penalize mistakes
Encourage error learning	Stick to the plan

Table 1.

Opening and closing leader behavior.

Table 1 explains and summarizes the differences between the two leaders’ behavior (closing and opening). In particular, when explaining the activities of opening and closing leaders in ambidextrous leadership, experts relate that leadership style to what Bass and Avolio argued in 2003 about transformational and transactional leadership.

4. Transformational and transactional leadership

Ambidextrous transformational leaders are characterized by leadership styles that inspire and motivate employees or subordinates, who in turn are able to encourage and generate creative ideas and implement those ideas in innovative projects. The provision of motivation to employees by these leaders can occur through the transformation of attitudes, beliefs, and values of followers, as well as through the communication of high expectations, the use of symbols, and the disclosure of complex problems in a simple way [25]. Leaders with this style are able to move followers beyond self-interest through ideal influence (charisma), inspiration, intellectual stimulation, or individual consideration. This approach is able to motivate followers to achieve high performance. There is a positive relationship between transformational leadership style and innovation because transformational leadership can increase motivation and can encourage followers to avoid the status quo [22]. Transformational leaders also reward their employees for completing desired activities and encourage appropriate behavior. This leadership style is very identical to the opening approach, which is more exploratory. The transformational leadership style is the most studied leadership style in the field of leadership in recent years and is considered an effective way to improve the performance of corporate technological innovation [21, 22].

Meanwhile, transactional leadership is associated with exploitative behavior. Transactional leaders demand the completion of tasks and demand the compliance of their employees with the strict rules prescribed by them while demanding the achievement of certain product goals within a predetermined time frame. They define goals and also value goal achievement [22, 29]. Experimentation and risk-taking are rarely or discouraged by such leaders, while the efficiency and improvement of existing routines are the main foci of attention. As a result, transactional leaders succeeded in improving the coordination of high-level organizational activities across all levels of the organization [10, 12]. Transactional leadership is described as leadership that builds exchange-based relationships by clarifying goals, valuing goal achievement, and intervening when necessary. Although, on the other hand, transactional leadership does not encourage experimentation, this leadership style lacks a positive relationship with creativity and innovation [10, 12].

Transformational and transactional leadership styles when faced with the uniqueness of “opening” and “closing” behavior can be seen as shown in Table 2.

	Opening leader behavior	Closing leader behavior
Transformational leadership	Establish a vision that motivates exploratory behavior	Establish a vision that motivates confirmatory behavior
	Stimulation of thinking in a very new direction	Stimulation of small improvements and increased efficiency
	Communication of the values of openness and tolerance	Communication of the value of rigor and adherence to the rules
Transactional leadership	Rewarding experimentation	Rewarding efficiency
	Focus on mistakes to learn from mistakes	Focus on mistakes to avoid mistakes
	Setting and monitoring exploration objectives	Setting and monitoring exploitation objectives

Table 2.

Categorization of transformational and transactional leadership behaviors as opening and closing leadership behaviors.

Table 2 tries to blend transformational and transactional leadership styles with opening and closing leadership behaviors. The important point that Table 2 wants to show is that leaders must be sensitive to situations that require flexibility to switch from one type of behavior to another or from one leadership style to a leadership style that suits the demands of the situation and conditions at hand.

Leaders must realize that opening and closing behaviors are inseparable from each other; it is an “integrative thought,” that is, “the ability to deal constructively with the tension of opposing ideas.” Integrative thinking refers to refraining from making a decision between two ideas but integrating both into one superior idea [30]. The creativity that exists in opening leadership behavior, however, requires exploitation skills, while the implementation of ideas in closing leadership behavior also requires exploration skills. Creative ideas must not only be new but also useful and require exploitation of existing knowledge [10, 12, 31]. Ambitious leaders need to consider the exploration and exploitation of leaders’ open and closed minds and behaviors and integrate them into a coherent overall strategy [15, 32].

Gouda and Tiwari [28] link ambidextrous leadership with agile talent development in an organization, so HR professionals need to develop an innovative culture where leaders encourage exploitation and exploration behavior, so that employees become flexible especially in expressing their ideas openly and taking risks without fear of undesirable outcomes while implementing new practices that lead to high employee engagement.

5. Ambidextrous from the systematic literature review (SLR) approach

In order to compile, evaluate, and synthesize scientific literature relevant to the topic of ambidextrous leadership, researchers using Publish or Perish (PoP) source data with a span of 23 years, starting from 2000 to 2023, found as many as 311 articles related to ambidextrous leadership on Google Scholar, 104 articles on Scopus indexed journals, and 1000 ambidextrous-related articles on Semantic Science.

From the screening process carried out on 1415 articles by taking only articles that discuss specifically ambidextrous leadership and the phenomenon of shifting demands in the business world and setting aside articles with discussions of the same object, subject, population, and industry (duplication), it was determined that as many as 311 articles were studied more deeply. Of the 311 articles, deepening was carried out by considering the condition of the organization after the outbreak of COVID-19, and as many as 104 articles, including journals, book chapters and proceedings of seminars and conventions, were found that met the criteria set.

In the end, the SLR was decided to synthesize as many as 71 articles that best fit the topic to be discussed on the occasion of this scientific oration, after setting aside 33 articles that were considered to have less significant relevance or had been adequately represented by 71 selected articles. The entire SLR process is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

SLR process ambidextrous leadership articles in the years 2000–2023.

Of the 71 ambidextrous leadership articles studied, 176 article authors and the author who first used the term “ambidextrous leadership” was an academic from the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien Germany named Rosing who published his article in 2010 in the Journal “Innovation and International Corporate Growth” pp. 191–204 entitled Ambidextrous leadership in the innovation process. Rosing co-authored this article with two other co-authors, Rosenbusch, N. and Frese, M. From the research that researchers did, until now, Rosing has written six articles and became the most and consistent author who raised about Ambidextrous leadership. One of Rosing’s articles entitled “Explaining the heterogeneity of the leadership-innovation relationship: Ambidextrous leadership” published in the journal “The Leadership Quarterly”, Vol. 22 (issue 5) in 2011 pp. 956–974 co-authored with Frese, M. and Bausch to date has been cited by 1518 other articles.

In addition to Rosing, Zacher contributed four articles. Frese from Leipzig University, Germany, and Luu from Swinburne University, Australia, have contributed by writing three articles each. Rosing, Zacher, and Frese examine both qualitatively and quantitatively the relationship of ambidextrous leadership, as a balance of leader behavior that is “opening” and “closing” in influencing employees or teams to act through exploratory and exploitative approaches and ways in doing creativity and innovation in organizations. The keywords used by the authors are “ambidextrous leadership”, “innovation”, “employee innovation behavior”, “opening”, “closing”, “Ambidexterity”, “Exploitation”, “exploration”, “transformational leadership”, and “transactional leadership”.

Further research conducted by researchers shows that the number of articles discussing ambidextrous leadership has increased significantly since 2016 and peaked in 2023 with 20 articles or 28% of all selected articles discussing ambidextrous leadership. Figure 3 shows seven article publishers (journal with 60 articles, book chapter 10 and 1 from seminar proceedings). Referring to publishers or groups of publishers, the search results using SLR show that the 71 articles that are widely referenced by researchers about ambidextrous leadership are published by seven reputable international publishers as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Publisher of ambidextrous leadership articles.

In-depth exploration is carried out by researchers based on the country of origin of the authors shows that the authors of ambidextrous leadership articles come from 24 countries, as shown in Figure 4. From ASEAN member states, there are Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. Of course, it is a challenge for Indonesian researchers to contribute to producing research related to ambidextrous leadership and eligible for upload by reputable journal publishers as well as indexed by Scopus or Web of Science (WOS).

Figure 4.

Country of origin of the authors of ambidextrous leadership.

A more in-depth search of the bibliography with the SLR approach conducted by the researchers shows that all 71 articles related to ambidextrous leadership) were conducted by academics from 58 universities in five countries, as shown in Table 3.

Country	College
China	Nanjing University, Peking University, Southeast University, Sichuan Normal University, Dalian University of Technology, Wuhan University, Jiangsu University, Tongji University, Xiamen University, North China Electric Power University, University of Science and Technology, Donghua University, Jiangsu University, Zhejiang University, Kunming University
Germany	Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, University of Hamburg, EBS Universität für Wirtschaft und Recht, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Martin-Luther-University, University of Kassel, Leipzig University, Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien
Australia	Curtin University, Swinburne University, University of Queensland
UK	Edge Hill University, Oxford Brookes University, Bangor University, University of Warwick
USA	Northwestern University, Babson College (Emeritus)

Table 3.

College of origin of the author of ambidextrous leadership.

It can be seen from Table 3 above that of the 58 universities, China, Germany, and Australia are the countries of origin of universities that produce the most researchers in the field of ambidextrous leadership.

In terms of research methods used, the most ambidextrous leadership articles were carried out with a quantitative approach (48 percents) and qualitative research as many as 23 percents as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5.

Ambidextrous leadership research approach.

Ambidextrous leadership is not something that can stand alone; many variables are involved in it. From the entire article studied, several other factors were found that can affect both directly and indirectly. A comprehensive picture of other factors or aspects can be shown by the keywords used as shown in Table 4.

Cluster	Topic	Keywords	Citation
Ambidextrous	Ambidexterity, Ambidextrous leadership, Ambidextrous organization, Ambidextrous innovation, Ambidextrous behavior, Ambidextrous top executives, Ambidextrous, Ambidextrous learning, Ambidextrous paradox work, Ambidextrous HRM, Indirect ambidextrous leadership, Organizational ambidexterity, Organizational ambidextrous culture, Punctuated ambidextrous leadership, Simultaneous ambidextrous leadership, TmT-member ambidextrous behavior, Project ambidextrous culture	92	1.267
Innovation	Innovation, Exploratory innovation, Exploitative innovation, Employee innovation performance, Innovation performance, Climate for innovation, Organizational innovation, Service innovation capability, Green product innovation, Unlock innovation, Team innovation, Innovativeness as a project requirement, Innovative work behavior, Employee innovative behaviors, Radical innovative capability, Innovative behavior	28	3.133
Creativity	Creativity, Employee creativity, Creative self-efficacy, Creative behavior, Employees’ green creativity	7	514
Opening Behavior	Opening Behavior	3	511
Closing Behavior	Closing Behavior	3	511
Exploration Behavior	Exploration, Exploratory innovation, Exploratory learning	10	507
Exploitation Behavior	Exploitation, Exploitative innovation, Exploitative learning (ETL)	9	507
Leadership	Shared leadership, Leadership efficacy, Clinical nurse leadership, Leader–subordinate gender similarity, Distributed Leadership, Inclusive leadership, Strategic leadership, Female leadership, Leadership, Entrepreneurial leadership, Empowering leadership, Directive leadership, Leader–member exchange, Transformational leadership, Transactional leadership, Instrumental leadership, Adaptive/Flexible leadership, Leader support, Women leadership, Leadership gender, Leadership styles, Situational leadership, Flexible leadership, Versatile leadership, Leadership	37	2.143
Performance	Sustainability-based project performance, Operational performance, Sustainable development, Service recovery performance, Project performance, Organizational performance, Sustainability performance,	10	340
Knowledge	Knowledge-sharing, Knowledge process capability, Knowledge infrastructure capability, Knowledge search, Knowledge architecture, Knowledge-intensive firms	5	92
Organizational Behavior	Workplace well-being, Psychological, Work engagement, Workload, Employee engagement, Cognitive flexibility, Well-being, Emotional expression, Employee voice, Proactive Personality, Thriving at work, Team learning, Customer-directed OCB, Psychological safety, Self-efficacy, Role stress, Employee silence, Change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior, Employee voice behavior, Work motivation, Job stress, Equality, Diversity, Affective commitment, Customer-based OCB	21	138

Table 4.

Ambidextrous leadership relationship with other variables from the entire article studied, several other factors were found that can affect directly and indirectly variables (Total keywords = 212).

The number of articles related to ambidextrous leadership, especially those published in 2020 and above, is inseparable from the phenomenon that occurred in the business ecosystem after the COVID-19 pandemic that hit the world. China was the country that experienced the earliest outbreak of the COVID-19 virus and experienced the greatest pressure on almost all business and government activities and is the country that has produced the most research related to efforts to recover the situation and conduciveness of the business world affected by COVID-19.

In most of the articles published in 2020 and above, many researchers highlight the biggest challenge of the academic world as a value supplier for leaders throughout the industry to find the best methods and approaches that are able to balance the content of the curriculum and the learning methods and approaches used to produce graduates who in addition to having the power of reason or logic think exploitatively and professionally and are able to become managers who are reliable for the business world, as well as have values and exploratory abilities that are able to quickly identify gaps that occur, creatively, and lead change for the business world. The demands of the business/industrial world are of course a tough task and very challenging for the world of higher education.

The development of the ambidextrous to the field of human resource studies, especially leadership in the last four years, has shown very rapid development, analysis using VosViewer to find out what topics, aspects and factors are associated or associated with ambidextrous leadership shows that discussions about ambidextrous leadership are often associated with:

1. Ambidexterity

2. Innovation

3. Entrepreneurial orientation

4. Exploration

5. Exploitation

6. Ambidextrous innovation

7. Agility

This is shown as Figure 6 below.

Figure 6.

VosViewer ambidextrous leadership analysis.

6. Conclusion

Based on the desk research conducted, it can be concluded that ambidextrous leadership, organizational agility, and entrepreneurial orientation are key concepts in the field of business and organizational management in the current turbulence business ecosystem era, where the organization urgently needs to involve the management of exploration and exploitation activities simultaneously. Exploration involves seeking new opportunities, innovation, and risk-taking, while exploitation involves optimizing current processes, efficiency, and stability.

Organizations are required to respond quickly and effectively to changes in the external environment, market dynamics, and customer needs and demonstrate flexibility, adaptability, speed, and willingness to experiment and learn from failure but, on the other hand, must be able to create and implement new ideas, processes, products, or services that produce significant and valuable positive change.

Therefore, the ability to balance the need for stability and efficiency with the need to innovate and explore new opportunities must continue to be done, among others, by providing opportunities for development and good implementation of the concept of ambidextrous leadership at all levels of business organizations. Organizational leaders must seize emerging opportunities by encouraging and supporting innovation to find better ways of doing things, leading to increased efficiency and effectiveness by rewarding and promoting agility and innovation in leaders within their organizations.