Driving organisational ambidexterity through process management. The key role of cultural change

There is an intense debate in the literature on the impact of process management on innovation, and the division of opinions becomes particularly apparent with regard to radical innovation. Furthermore, organisational ambidexterity, the organisational capability to undertake incremental as well as radical innovation activities, has been underlined as a key source of competitiveness. In this article, we analyse how the cultural divergence driven by process management can affect organisational ambidexterity. Through a survey carried out on a sample of Spanish firms in the furniture and textile sectors, both of which have been drastically hit by competition from Asian firms, we conclude that the cultural context created by process management practices applied in a total quality management framework, which embraces exploitation along with exploration values, acts as a platform for developing organisational ambidexterity. Since organisational ambidexterity constitutes the capability of undertaking a rich variety of learning and innovation activities, these results could also have significant implications for practitioners, pointing to the need for close coordination between different functional areas in order to manage cultural change.

[1]  Amrik S. Sohal,et al.  TQM and innovation: a literature review and research framework , 2001 .

[2]  Denis A. Coelho,et al.  Integrated total quality management: Beyond zero defects theory and towards innovation , 2011 .

[3]  Edgar Erdfelder,et al.  G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences , 2007, Behavior research methods.

[4]  J. Hackman,et al.  Total Quality Management: Empirical, Conceptual, and Practical Issues , 1995 .

[5]  S. Rajagopalan,et al.  Process Improvement, Quality, and Learning Effects , 1998 .

[6]  P. Lachenbruch.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.) , 1989 .

[7]  C. Gibson,et al.  THE ANTECEDENTS , CONSEQUENCES , AND MEDIATING ROLE OF ORGANIZATIONAL AMBIDEXTERITY , 2004 .

[8]  Richard Hauser,et al.  Toward Defining the Quality Culture , 1999 .

[9]  V. Pucik,et al.  Relationship between innovativeness, quality, growth, profitability, and market value , 2005 .

[10]  P. Adler,et al.  Two Types of Bureaucracy: Enabling and Coercive , 1996 .

[11]  Trevor J. Green,et al.  TQM and organisational culture: How do they link? , 2012 .

[12]  Marko Sarstedt,et al.  The Use of Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling in Strategic Management Research: A Review of Past Practices and Recommendations for Future Applications , 2012 .

[13]  Michel Tenenhaus,et al.  PLS path modeling , 2005, Comput. Stat. Data Anal..

[14]  Lynda Aiman-Smith,et al.  Assessing a multidimensional measure of radical technological innovation , 1995 .

[15]  G. Soutar,et al.  Consumer perceived value: The development of a multiple item scale , 2001 .

[16]  Paul S. Adler,et al.  Workers and Flexible Manufacturing Systems: Three Installations Compared , 1991 .

[17]  Wynne W. Chin,et al.  Structural equation modeling analysis with small samples using partial least squares , 1999 .

[18]  Su Mi Dahlgaard-Park.  The quality movement: Where are you going? , 2011 .

[19]  Jens J. Dahlgaard,et al.  Organizational Learnability and Innovability: a system for assessing, diagnosing and improving innovations , 2010 .

[20]  Wynne W. Chin.  The partial least squares approach for structural equation modeling. , 1998 .

[21]  J. Dean,et al.  MANAGEMENT THEORY AND TOTAL QUALITY: IMPROVING RESEARCH AND PRACTICE THROUGH THEORY DEVELOPMENT , 1994 .

[22]  Jayant V. Saraph,et al.  An Instrument for Measuring the Critical Factors of Quality Management , 1989 .

[23]  Mary J. Benner,et al.  Process Management and Technological Innovation: A Longitudinal Study of the Photography and Paint Industries , 2002 .

[24]  C. Fornell,et al.  Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. , 1981 .

[25]  R. Sitgreaves.  Psychometric theory (2nd ed.). , 1979 .

[26]  Amrik S. Sohal,et al.  Transitioning from total quality management to total innovation management: An Australian case , 2004 .

[27]  Ana B. Escrig-Tena,et al.  An empirical assessment of the EFQM Excellence Model: Evaluation as a TQM framework relative to the MBNQA Model , 2009 .

[28]  C. Bartlett,et al.  Linking organizational context and managerial action: The dimensions of quality of management , 2007 .

[29]  Abraham Carmeli,et al.  How top management team behavioral integration and behavioral complexity enable organizational ambidexterity: The moderating role of contextual ambidexterity , 2009 .

[30]  John Hulland,et al.  Use of partial least squares (PLS) in strategic management research: a review of four recent studies , 1999 .

[31]  D. Denison,et al.  Corporate Culture and Organizational Effectiveness. , 1991 .

[32]  Henk W. Volberda,et al.  Exploratory Innovation, Exploitative Innovation and Peformance: Effects of Organizational Antecedents and Environmental Moderators , 2006, Manag. Sci..

[33]  Kostas N. Dervitsiotis.  The challenge of adaptation through innovation based on the quality of the innovation process , 2011 .

[34]  John Bessant,et al.  Managing Innovation: Integrating Technological, Market, and Organizational Change, 2nd Edition , 2001 .

[35]  E. Aspinwall,et al.  Using the competing values framework to investigate the culture of Qatar industries , 2001 .

[36]  Klaudia Frankfurter,et al.  Beyond Rational Management Mastering The Paradoxes And Competing Demands Of High Performance , 2016 .

[37]  R. McAdam.  Knowledge creation and idea generation: a critical quality perspective , 2004 .

[38]  Sameer Prasad,et al.  Cultural and structural constraints on total quality management implementation , 1998 .

[39]  David L. Deeds,et al.  Exploration and Exploitation Alliances in Biotechnology: A System of New Product Development , 2004 .

[40]  Jens J. Dahlgaard,et al.  Quality culture and TQM , 1991 .

[41]  M. D. M. Luzón,et al.  Ambidexterity and total quality management: towards a research agenda , 2011 .

[42]  John Rohrbaugh,et al.  A Spatial Model of Effectiveness Criteria: Towards a Competing Values Approach to Organizational Analysis , 1983 .

[43]  M. Kenward,et al.  An Introduction to the Bootstrap , 2007 .

[44]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[45]  R. Gulati.  Is Slack Good or Bad for Innovation ? , 2007 .

[46]  Zi-Lin He,et al.  Exploration vs. Exploitation: An Empirical Test of the Ambidexterity Hypothesis , 2004, Organ. Sci..

[47]  Mary J. Benner,et al.  Exploitation, Exploration, and Process Management: The Productivity Dilemma Revisited , 2003 .

[48]  Jens J. Dahlgaard,et al.  Integrating business excellence and innovation management: Developing vision, blueprint and strategy for innovation in creative and learning organizations , 1999 .

[49]  C. McDermott,et al.  The relationship between total quality management practices and organizational culture , 2005 .

[50]  R. Frank Falk,et al.  A Primer for Soft Modeling , 1992 .

[51]  Kerstin Liehr-Gobbers,et al.  Evaluation of Structural Equation Models Using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) Approach , 2010 .

[52]  Shih-Chieh Fang,et al.  Knowledge as a facilitator for enhancing innovation performance through total quality management , 2010 .