Organisational innovation climate as a mediator of the relationship between complexity leadership and contextual ambidexterity

Abstract

Organisations today face the challenge of efficiency in the management of todayÕs business demands, the search for new opportunities and to deal with complexity. Organisations need to be innovative to survive and succeed: leaders need to drive contextual ambidexterity (exploitative and exploratory innovation). The context in which a business finds itself, and creates internally, can be harnessed together with leadership to achieve these objectives. Leadership plays a fundamental role in developing and promoting contextual ambidexterity, yet there has been limited research on the success and mediating factors., and what leadership approach can achieve this effectively. Therefore, a greater understanding of relationships between leadership and contextual ambidexterity, and mediating factors will be useful for leaders and organisations. This research investigates this: how complexity leadership and organisational innovation climate promote contextual ambidexterity. Through SEM using 1204 secondary survey responses, the researcher investigated the relationships between complexity leadership, contextual ambidexterity and organisational innovation climate, and the mediating effect of organisational innovation climate. Results showed that the climate plays and important mediator role between complexity leadership and innovation, as well as having a significant direct effect on innovation. From these findings, organisations can gain insights into leader development and internal contextual factors that may drive contextual ambidexterity, and therefore survival and success.