Zum 15. Schweizer KMU-Tag erscheint der sechste Band in der «Fit für…»-Reihe, dieses Mal zum Thema Selbstführung.
«Fit für die Selbstführung in KMU» beantwortet 7x3 Fragen zum wirksamen Selbstmanagement in Klein- und Mittelunternehmen (KMU). In kleinen, leicht verdaulichen Häppchen begleitet es Unternehmerinnen und Unternehmer, die über sich nachdenken und ihren Alltag noch besser im Griff haben möchten.
Ambidexterity research has noted that firms’ simultaneous pursuit of exploration and exploitation causes organizational tensions that are difficult to resolve. To make these tensions manageable, scholars have generally suggested that senior managers take the central role in designing organizational solutions, such as the structural separation or contextual integration of the exploratory and exploitative tasks. Yet, in an inductive study of ten corporate innovation initiatives, we find that our informants assigned far less importance to the senior managers’ initial design choices than to the frontline managers’ subsequent configurational practices. Frontline managers used these practices to constantly adapt and align their initiatives’ organizational contexts, which allowed them to cope with persistent exploration-exploitation tensions in their daily business activities. Based on these empirical insights and drawing on paradox theory, we develop a configurational perspective on ambidexterity, where frontline managers play a more central, proactive, and strategic role than purported by the established design perspective on ambidexterity.
Ambidexterity research has proposed structural, leadership, and organizational context drivers to reconcile the conflicting forces of exploration and exploitation. However, little is known about how these drivers interact and whether they act as complements or substitutes. Based on a two-stage survey study amongst small and medium-sized enterprises, we find that structural drivers, leadership drivers, and organizational context drivers of ambidexterity do not demonstrate complementarity as is generally assumed, but may rather act at cross-purposes with each other. This finding permits the development of important theoretical insights for ambidexterity research.
Ambidexterity research has proposed a variety of drivers to reconcile the conflicting forces of exploration and exploitation. However, little is known about how these drivers interact and whether they act as complements or substitutes. Based on a two-stage survey study amongst small and medium-sized enterprises, we find that structural drivers, leadership drivers, and informal drivers of ambidexterity do not demonstrate complementarity as is generally assumed, but may rather act at cross-purposes with each other. This finding permits the development of important theoretical insights for ambidexterity research and for the broader theory on organizational capabilities.
The objective of this chapter is to develop a process perspective on ambidexterity that not only informs the specific research on reconciling the contradictory forces of exploration and exploitation, but also the broader theory on how organizations experience and address paradoxical tensions. We distinguish three stages of paradox management within ambidextrous organizations. During the initiation stage, organizational actors identify the paradoxical tensions and develop a strategic plan to address them. In the subsequent contextualization stage, they put the organizational structures, cultures, and processes in place, with which to address the paradox. During the implementation stage, the organizational actors manage the paradoxical tensions in their day-to-day activities. By comparing the structural, contextual, and sequential pathways that organizations take to navigate these stages, we review and expand current theorizing on exploration– exploitation tensions and derive promising avenues for future ambidexterity and paradox research.
A key question confronting managers during economic crisis is how their firms can remain stable while others experience downturns. To address this question, the present study uses non-linear modeling to examine how firm-internal responses (i.e., ambidexterity) and external public policy responses (i.e., demand-pull policies) affect the stability of firms’ performance in a recessionary economic context. Using survey data from German renewable energy firms and archival measures of firm performance stability, we find that ambidexterity has a U-shaped effect on performance stability. Conversely, demand-pull policies do not seem to have a significant effect on performance stability on their own. However, we find that firms with low levels of ambidexterity do benefit from demand-pull policies. These findings allow several contributions to the ambidexterity and public policy literatures and to the broader question of how firms and policy makers can tackle economic crisis.
We develop a new tail risk measure for hedge funds to examine the impact of tail risk on fund performance and to identify the sources of tail risk. We find that tail risk affects the cross-sectional variation in fund returns, and investments in both, tail-sensitive stocks as well as options, drive tail risk. Moreover, managerial incentives and discretion as well as exposure to funding liquidity shocks are important determinants of tail risk. We find evidence that is consistent with funds being able to time tail risk exposure prior to the recent financial crisis.
This paper introduces a new information density indicator to provide a more comprehensive understanding of price reactions to news and, more specifically, to the sources of jumps in financial markets. Our information density indicator, which measures the abnormal amount of noisy "ticker" news before scheduled macroeconomic announcements, is significantly related to the likelihood of price jumps and independent of the magnitude of news surprises or pre-announcement trading activity. We therefore interpret this variable as a measure of additional uncertainty in the market, which is resolved by macroeconomic news as "hard" facts.
