 Link on, Link off: Data-driven management of organizational networks for ambidexterityIvan Belik and Eirik Sjåholm Knudsen Journal of Business Research, 2023, vol. 157, issue C Abstract: We examine how firms can intentionally design and manage their organizational networks to balance exploration and exploitation when a new exploration unit is established within an organization. We combine insights from the literature on social networks and structural ambidexterity and make two main arguments. First, a firm needs to ensure that the exploration unit is sufficiently connected to other parts of the organization where key complementary assets reside while minimizing the number of linkages to reduce the influence of the “old” way of thinking on new exploration efforts, to reduce coordination costs, and to increase adaptive ability. Second, the “ideal” level of connectedness for structural ambidexterity ultimately depends on the number of valuable complementary assets in a firm’s possession. We also show how managers can combine analytical methods from the computational literature on network analysis with managerial adjustments to do so in practice. Keywords: Organizational networks; Ambidexterity; Social networks; Knowledge flows; Network analysis; Data-driven (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:157:y:2023:i:c:s0148296322010207 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113555 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.