Abstract:
Organisations today are faced with numerous external forces, and the business environment has become very dynamic in terms of innovation and digitisation. Organisations are demanded to lead change and innovation to remain competitive. While driving change and innovation there is a need to find efficiencies in current business operations.
The sustainability of the organization over the long term is dependant it’s capability to achieve ambidexterity. This ability will allow an organisation to find optimal balance between exploration activities and exploitation activities. The role of leaders in influencing the ability of an organisation to achieve ambidexterity is increasingly being recognized as a crucial element. The research around leaderships role remains fragmented, and incomplete. This study recognises exploration and exploitation as a paradox, and through a paradoxical lens tries to understand how leaders can find an optimal balance between these paradoxical activities.
This was a qualitative, exploratory study intended to understand how leaders practically balanced paradoxes to achieve ambidexterity. Twelve semi-structured, interviews were conducted with senior management and executive leaders across industries working for South African and multi-national companies.
The research consolidates knowledge from existing literature and tests the validity with leaders and the relevance of the framework. The study analysed multi-level paradoxes, on how the leaders balanced these paradoxes to drive innovation and change in the organisation. The findings have been consolidated into a single framework which provide a holistic view on how leaders drive innovation and change, while exploiting the current business operations. The aim was to provide a framework for leaders which could be applied in practice to balance paradoxes.
