Innovation in High Reliability Ambidextrous Organizations

This chapter explains the problem statement, which concerns the balancing of exploitation and exploration and this in an environment or culture where innovation can be critical or event fatal. This usually goes along with employees that are trained not to be innovative at all where such implementation is especially challenging. Later the research questions and propositions are defined that aim at finding out how the interactions between key players from the explorative and exploitative side and how boundary activities can improve the implementation of innovations in such industries. Finally, the current gap in the theory is defined and explained how this dissertation is being structured.

The following “Literature Review and Theoretical Propositions” presents the theoretical foundations of this thesis that underpin the relevance of the subject. Section 2.1 explains the different streams in current literature in the domain of innovation and how they relate to this thesis. Section 2.2 also revisits the theoretical stream of organizational ambidexterity with a view to the objects of this thesis. Both of these sections also cover the status quo of academic literature regarding the subject at hand. The last section (Sect. 2.3) embeds the theoretical propositions of the research, which derived mainly from innovation and organizational ambidexterity literature. However, other related theoretical streams, such as organizational design, project management, leadership, and several others are also feeding into the eventual propositions.

An appropriate research approach was chosen according to the proposed research questions. In particular, research questions concerning aspects of “how” and “why” suggest a qualitative approach. The qualitative approach is capable of explaining presumed causal links in real life interventions and interactions that are too complex for a survey (Yin, Case study research: design and methods (5th edn), Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2014). Since this research project is focused on organizational ambidexterity and on technological innovation, it indeed tries to shed some light on complex phenomena. For examining such phenomena, a qualitative research approach is advisable.

The empirical results of this dissertation derive mainly from two sources, namely interviews and focus groups. Therefore, the findings obtained from these two sources for the two case studies are presented in separate sections, while the findings obtained from other sources such as documentation, archival data, direct observation and physical artifacts, are documented together in the section “Findings from other sources”. This chapter is structured so that each case is documented individually. The presentation of the results for each case study starts with the findings from interviews, followed by the findings from the focus groups, and ends with the findings from other sources. Furthermore, background information regarding each case study, such as the number of interview partners or the methods applied, is also provided as an overview.

As mentioned in Chap. 3, inductive category building was used in order to identify factors that confirm or negate theoretical propositions. Since some inductively built categories are dependant on each other, several categories appear under different propositions. Nevertheless, each category is explained only once even if related to several propositions. When contributing to other propositions, the category is referred too, but not defined nor explained again. In such a case “firstly defined earlier” is stated.

The previous chapter (Chap. 4) focused on presenting the best suitable and relevant findings from the case study database to explain the rationale behind the derived results. Furthermore, the displayed data also show the sometimes fine-grained, but in certain cases also relevant differences between the two case studies, mainly due to their different organizational setups.

In this chapter, the findings are first contrasted with related and, in some instances, also more remote literature in the relevant research streams of “innovation” and “ambidextrous organizations”, as well as other literature in Sect. 5.1. This is done to confirm the findings from other research projects, raise questions, and contradict some findings of other researchers. Other findings will also be taken up and discussed to further elicit and support these empirical results. In the same section of the findings, this also broaches some issue with surprising insights for the author and for the current body of knowledge about the subject being researched. Still, these surprising findings and their linkages are accepted as interesting and potentially important for other researchers, and they often give further reasons to support the propositions of this study. In Sect. 5.2, the findings are matched against the theoretical propositions stated initially, belonging to two different families of propositions. As a principal result of this thesis, the propositions are confirmed or negated, depending on the empirical results that were found. After that, in Sect. 5.3, the findings are contrasted with the main objectives of the research.

The previous chapter, Chap. 5, outlined all findings systematically in order to finally conclude whether or not certain theoretical propositions can be confirmed or not. First, the findings were compared to current literature and how it substantiates certain findings; second, the findings were linked to the propositions for a comprehensive discussion. Finally, the research objective was considered to answer whether the objective of the research project was achieved or not. This chapter will analyze how the results can contribute to the body of current literature and provide new insights for practitioners.

On the one side, the results obtained in this study can enrich research in the fields of innovation and organizational ambidexterity. On the other side, many of the empirical results are very valuable for the practitioners, especially for the two companies that were part of the case study, since the results can be generalized on this limited scale. The obtained results can help improve the effectiveness and efficiency of both companies in the future implementation of innovations. With this in mind, the findings are summarized in a draft code of practice or ‘cookbook’ taking the form of 16 precise suggestions.

Finally, the last section addresses the shortcomings and limitations of this dissertation and other avenues for research opened up by this study. As in any research project, the choice of focus and perspective implies that another perspectives are not considered. The perspective in this research focused on observing the phenomena of organizational ambidexterity from a point of view of technological innovation. This fact is explained further in Sect. 6.4. Moreover, lots of new insights have been gained, but these new insights also brought up many new questions that have not been answered yet, but are outlined in Sect. 6.3. This last section is followed by the bibliography that also contains the annotated bibliography from the case studies used to conduct the empirical survey. “Appendices” were added, which include the case study protocols, with analytical and practical interview guidelines and the guidelines for focus groups. The same guidelines were used for both companies.