The impacts of middle managers' ambidexterity, continuous improvement, and organizational agility on business performance: A knowledge-based view

Abstract

Purpose: Using the knowledge-based view as the theoretical lens, this study aims to assess the effect of middle managers’ ambidexterity, continuous improvement and organizational agility on the business performance within the manufacturing and service industries. Design/methodology/approach: Quantitative survey was carried out using questionnaire whose data were collected from 197 middle managers’ responses collected in 2021. Structural Equation Modeling was used to analyze the direct and mediation relationships. Findings: The results demonstrated that the relationship between middle managers’ ambidexterity and business performance was insignificant but fully mediated by continuous improvement capacity and organizational agility. In both manufacturing and service sectors, our research also confirmed that middle managers have an important role in building continuous improvement capacity and organizational agility. The interchange between exploration and exploitation capabilities is an important competency that today’s middle managers should have. Originality/value: This study is amongst the first to investigate the phenomenon of middle managers’ ambidexterity in both manufacturing and service sectors from the knowledge-based view theory. The new knowledge is generated from the in-depth investigation of how middle managers interchangeably use their exploiting and exploring capabilities to achieve their business performances.

Keywords

• ambidexterity, middle managers, continuous improvement, agile organization, operations management