Co-evolution of organizational ambidexterity and competitive environment: the results of an Italian case study

Recent development of the innovation literature clearly point that there are many tensions, paradoxes and dilemmas associated with innovation activities. Building ambidexterity capability has been recently proved to be key points for managing and resolving conflicting demands and conflicting activities. How firms can develop and sustain ambidexterity capability, however, still remain major points of discussion and the need exists for additional conceptual and empirical investigations. Furthermore, organizations are recognized to be in continuous interaction with their competitive environment, and to co-evolve with it, by reconfiguring their activities and design to meet environmental changes. However, there are no studies that take a temporally sensitive perspective, capturing ambidexterity co-evolution with the organization’s environment. The aim of this paper is therefore, on the one hand, to analyze how firms can achieve ambidexterity and, on the other hand, to explore how ambidexterity capability co-evolves with the competitive environment. To better reveal the complexity of the phenomenon, we decided to conduct a longitudinal case study, using a fine grained unit of analysis: the early phase of the innovation process - search phase . The case study contributes to the literature on ambidexterity capability in two main ways. On the one hand it has enabled us to identify a potential three-phased process by which firms should succeed in achieving ambidexterity. On the other hand, the case study clearly shows that there is no single ambidextrous configuration that makes it possible to support all environmental conditions that the organization must address over time