Deepening the concept of contextual ambidexterity and assessing its influence on public organizations' performance

• Autor(a) principal: Calado, André Salgado Paiva
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/19368
• topic: Human resources management; Organizational performance; Public organizations management; Gestão de recursos humanos; Ambidextria contextual -- Contextual ambidextria; Desempenho organizacional; Gestão de organizações públicas; Administração pública -- Public administration; Empresa pública

Contextual ambidexterity has caught the interest of researchers for the recent years. However, the concept itself has not evolved since its creation in 2004 by the work of Gibson and Birkinshaw and, to this time, it is seen as a combination of the capacities for alignment and adaptability in a business unit. In this dissertation, some modifications to the model are proposed in order to strengthen it. These are to transform alignment and adaptability into a set of sub-dimensions each and to add a third variable, autonomy norm. Additionally, the new model was tested in organizations from the public sector because, given the particular pressures that these organizations face, it would be logical that this organizational capacity would help to balance them. Confirmatory factor analyses and hierarchical regression analysis were used to examine the responses from 199 public workers and their results were satisfactory, since alignment and adaptability were better represented as multiple factors, autonomy norm showed to reinforce contextual ambidexterity and, at last, all three variables displayed some effect on performance. These results will have both implications for the existing and future literature on ambidexterity and for the practices of managers in public organizations.