Business Commons^™

The Curvilinear Relationships Between Top Decision Maker Goal Orientations And Firm Ambidexterity: Moderating Effect Of Role Experience, Christopher Pryor, Susana C. Santos, Jiangpei Xie

Rohrer College of Business Faculty Scholarship

Ambidextrous firms are those that can simultaneously manage exploitative and explorative innovation, which is why ambidexterity is key for firms that desire to pursue strategic entrepreneurship. Researchers have explored many of the reasons why some firms are more ambidextrous than others. However, little attention has been devoted to understanding how attributes of top decision makers can influence their firms' ambidexterity. By drawing on upper echelons theory and goal orientations research, we explain how firms' ambidexterity can be affected by top decision makers' motivations in achievement situations (i.e., goal orientations). Testing our hypotheses on a sample of 274 top decision makers …