W2: Birkinshaw & Gibson (2004): Building Ambidexterity into an Organisation Flashcards
Adaptability
The ability to move quickly toward new opportunities, adjust to volatile markets and avoid complacency, has become more important to managers
Alignment
A clear sense of how value is being created in the short term and how activities should be coordinated and streamlined to deliver that value
Ambidexterity
The combination of adaptaibility and alignment. It is difficult to find the right balance. Focusing too much on alignment, will make short-term results look good but changes in the industry will blindside you later. Focusing too much on adaptability and you build tomorrow’s business at the expense of today. It is typically associated only with the structural separation of activities
Structural ambidexterity
To create separate structures for different types of activities. This separation is necessary, as they are fundamentally different. However, this can also lead to isolation. Many R&D groups have failed to get acceptance because of the lack of linkages to the core business
Contextual ambidexterity
Calls for individual employees to make choices between alignment-oriented and adaptation-oriented activities in the context of their day-to-day work. In business units that are either solely aligned or solely adaptive, employees have clear mandates and are rewarded accordingly. In an ambidextrous unit, the systems and structures are more flexible, allowing employees to use their own judgement to divide their time between adaptation-oriented and alignment-oriented activities
Market orientation
A collective orientation of people throughout a business toward the gathering, interpretation, and dissemination of market knowledge
Context
An invisible set of stimuli and pressures that motivate people to act in a certain way. Thus, managers shape organisational context through systems, incentives, and control they put in place, and daily actions. It is then reinforced through the behaviours and attitudes of people throughout the organisation. Attributes stretch, discipline, support, and trust interact to define an organisation’s context
Performance management
Consists of stretch and discipline. It is concerned with stimulating people to deliver high-quality results and making them accountable for their actions
Social support
Consists of support and trust. It is concerned with providing people with the security and latitude they need to perform
Burnout context
A demanding, result-driven orientation that lacks social support. Many people will perform well for a limited time, but its depersonalised, individualistic, and authority driven nature will typically result in high level employee turnover, making ambidexterity difficult to achieve
Country club context
Due to strong social support without high-performance expectations. Employees benefit and enjoy a collegial environment but rarely produce up to their potential. Companies have low ambidexterity and produce satisfactory but lackluster results
Low-performance context
Ambidexterity is possible. There is little concern for performance, but no trust or support among employees. The company must place immediate priority on developing improved performance management. Social support mechanisms can follow well before the risk of burnout becomes an issue
Resources
Without doubt, access to abundant, high-quality resources increases an organisations chances of coping with change
Processes
Patterns of interaction, coordination, communication, and decision-making employees use to transform resources into products and services of greater worth. They are set up so that employees consistently perform tasks. One that creates a capability to execute one task concurrently defines disabilities in other tasks. The most important ones are less visible, background processes that support decisions about where to invest resources
Values
The standards by which employees set priorities that enable them to judge whether an order is attractive or unattractive, whether a customer is important or less important, whether an idea for a new product is attractive or marginal, etc. These decisions are made at every level
Sustaining innovations
Often introduced by established industry leaders. They never introduce, or cope well with, disruptive innovation as they make a product or service perform better in ways which are in the customers’ mainstream market value already
Disruptive innovations
Create an entirely new market through the introduction of a new kind of product or service and they occur so intermittently that no company has a routine for handling them. They also almost always have lower-profit margins per unit sold and are not attractive to the firm’s best customer. Thus, they are inconsistent with the firm values. Thus, smaller, disruptive companies are often more capable of pursuing emerging markets than large companies
Heavy weight teams
Consist of relevant people from the existing organisation around which managers draw a new boundary. New team boundaries facilitate new patterns of working together that ultimately coalesce as new processes. These teams are entirely dedicated to the new challenge. Team members are physically located together and each member is charged with assuming personal responsibility for the success of the entire project
Spin out
Should be used when the organisation’s values would render it incapable of allocating resources to an innovation project. When a disruptive innovation requires a different cost structure in order to be profitable and competitive, or when the current size of the opportunity is insignifcant relative to the growth needs of the mainstream organisation, a spinout is required. The primary requirement for ‘separate’ is that the project not be forced to compete for resources with projects in the mainstream organisation
