When the Glass is Half Full and Half Empty: CEO's Ambivalent Interpretations of Strategic Issues

Nils Plambeck and Klaus Weber
Additional contact information
Nils Plambeck: GREGH - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion à HEC - HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Klaus Weber: Kellogg [Northwestern] - Kellogg School of Management [Northwestern University, Evanston] - Northwestern University [Evanston]

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Organizational scholars have highlighted the importance of interpretive ambivalence for mindfulness, creativity, and strategic change. Ambivalence occurs when an issue is seen simultaneously as positive and negative. We examine organizational factors that influence the propensity of organizational leaders to evaluate a new strategic issue ambivalently. Data come from a survey of 220 German CEOs confronted with the enlargement of the European Union. We find that CEOs of firms with a more ambidextrous strategic orientation and a moderate sense of organizational control over their environment are most likely to be ambivalent about this issue. Our findings affirm the prevalence of interpretive ambivalence at the executive level and suggest ways for organizations to promote or prevent ambivalence in strategic sensemaking.

Keywords: ambivalence; sensemaking; strategic issue diagnosis; organizational mindfulness; managerial cognition; organizational context (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Published in Strategic Management Journal, 2010, 31 (7), pp.689-710. ⟨10.1002/smj.835⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00528394

DOI: 10.1002/smj.835

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().