The Roots of Ambidexterity and Change: An Exploratory Case Study of Subjective Values and Decisions in an Executive Team

Book chapter, 2025

At the core of the capability to develop and change beyond incremental improvements lie a large number of decisions, where support of the established organizational modus operandi is weighed against investments in something new or different. The top management team is regularly charged with the most important of these decisions, and hence needs mastery of this capability, which commonly is called contextual ambidexterity. Multiple studies suggest that this is the case, but few explore the roots of this capability. In this exploratory multilevel case study, we search the micro-foundations of ambidexterity and study how subjective, individual values can affect the team efficiency in engaging in exploitive and explorative issues as well as their ability to be able to manage both. Moreover, this chapter discusses how the value palette in a management team can be influenced to enact such ambidextrous capability.