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A Dialectic Perspective on Innovation: Conflicting Demands, Multiple Pathways, and Ambidexterity

September 2009
Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2(3):305-337

DOI:10.1111/j.1754-9434.2009.01154.x

Authors:

Ronald Bledow

Singapore Management University

Michael Frese

NUS Business School and Leuphana University Lüneburg

Neil Robert Anderson

University of Bradford

Miriam Erez

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

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Abstract Innovation, the development and intentional introduction of new and useful ideas by individuals, teams, and organizations, lies at the heart of human adaptation. Decades of research in different disciplines and atdifferent organizational levelshave produced a wealth of knowledge,about how innovation emerges and the factors that facilitateand inhibit innovation. We propose that this knowledge needs integration. Inan initial step towardthis goal, we apply a dialectic perspective on innovation to overcome limitations of dichotomous reasoning and to

Ambidexterity: The Regulation of Explorative and Exploitative Action at Multiple Organizational Levels

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Industrial and Organizational Psychology

,2(2009), 305– 337.

2009 Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. 1754-9426/09

FOCAL ARTICLE

A Dialectic Perspective on Innovation:

Conﬂicting Demands, Multiple

Pathways, and Ambidexterity

RONALD BLEDOW AND MICHAEL FRESE

University of Giessen

NEIL ANDERSON

University of Amsterdam

MIRIAM EREZ

Israel Institute of Technology

JAMES FARR

Pennsylvania State University

Abstract

Innovation, the development and intentional introduction of new and useful ideas by individuals, teams, and

organizations, lies at the heart of human adaptation. Decades of research in different disciplines and at different

organizational levels have produced a wealth of knowledge about how innovation emerges and the factors that

facilitate and inhibit innovation. We propose that this knowledge needs integration. In an initial step toward

this goal, we apply a dialectic perspective on innovation to overcome limitations of dichotomous reasoning

and to gain a more valid account of innovation. We point out that individuals, teams, and organizations need

to self-regulate and manage conﬂicting demands of innovation and that multiple pathways can lead to idea

generation and innovation. By scrutinizing the current use of the concept of organizational ambidexterity and

extending it to individuals and teams, we develop a framework to help guide and facilitate future research and

practice. Readers expecting speciﬁc and universal prescriptions of how to innovate will be disappointed as

current research does not allow such inferences. Rather, we think innovation research should focus on develop-

ing and testing principles of innovation management in addition to developing decision aids for organizational

practice. To this end, we put forward key propositions and action principles of innovation management.

Correspondence concerning this article should be

addressed to Ronald Bledow.

E-mail: ronald.bledow@psychol.uni-giessen.de

Address: Department of Work and Organizational

Psychology, Otto-Behaghel-Str. 10F, 35394 Giessen,

Germany. University of Giessen

Ronald Bledow and Michael Frese, Department

of Work and Organizational Psychology, University

of Giessen; Neil Anderson, Faculty of Economics

and Business, University of Amsterdam; Miriam Erez,

Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management,

Technion— Israel Institute of Technology; James

Farr, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State

University

This research was supported by a scholarship

(D/08/45383) of the German Academic Exchange Ser-

vice granted to the ﬁrst author and a research grant by

the Volkswagen Foundation (II/82 408). We appreci-

ate the thoughtful comments of our colleague Kathrin

Rosing. Furthermore, we would like to thank our col-

leagues Andreas Bausch, Nataliya Baytalskaya, Verena

Mueller, Nina Rosenbusch, Alexander Schwall, and

Shaker Zahra for discussions on initial ideas from

which the current manuscript emerged.

Throughout this article, we use the term

creativity

for the generation of new and use-

ful ideas and that of innovation to include

both creative ideas and their implementa-

tion. Innovation can take different forms,

including technological innovation, prod-

uct and service innovation, and process

innovation. The importance of innovation

is widely acknowledged by organizational

scholars, practitioners, and the wider soci-

ety in an economic environment character-

ized by ﬁerce competition, rapid change,

and the global challenges of climate change

and economic booms and busts. Decades

of research have produced a wealth of

knowledge about the characteristics of

individuals, teams, and organizations that

are related to outcomes of innovation

(e.g., Anderson, De Dreu, & Nijstad, 2004;

305

306

R. Bledow et al.

Damanpour, 1991). Some of these ﬁnd-

ings converge around factors that have

been reliably found to inﬂuence innovation,

such as a shared vision, innovative orga-

nizational culture (Miron, Erez, & Naveh,

2004; Naveh & Erez, 2004), emphasis on

exploration rather than exploitation, and

investment in R&D (Cohen & Levinthal,

1990; Zahra & George, 2002). Findings with

respect to other factors such as team diver-

sity (Gibson & Gibbs, 2006), task-related

conﬂict, and monetary rewards (Amabile,

2000; Eisenberger & Rhoades, 2001) remain

contradictory. Although we think that the

scientiﬁc understanding of innovation is an

important endeavor in its own right, we also

suggest that the impact of scientiﬁc knowl-

edge about innovation can be improved

in organizational practice. Although many

reasons may account for a lack of transfer of

scientiﬁc knowledge to management prac-

tices, one reason may be that the scientiﬁc

ﬁndings do not readily or easily produce

actionable knowledge.

However, simplistically inferring prac-

tical implications or trying to be overly

prescriptive can do harm, particularly if the

context of an individual, team, or orga-

nization is not taken into account. We,

therefore, chose to integrate empirical ﬁnd-

ings of the extant literature with an attempt

to develop a set of broad principles of inno-

vation management that can guide decision

making and action in organizations. We

base this integration on a perspective on

innovation, which we term

dialectic

;we

present and develop this perspective below.

Toward this goal, we offer three contribu-

tions to the literature:

•By developing and applying a dialectic

perspective on innovation, we aim

to gain a more valid account of

innovation in organizations that can

enrich research and practice.

•By reviewing core ﬁndings about

innovation, we illustrate how multiple

pathways can lead to idea generation

and innovation.

•By redeﬁning and extending the con-

cept of ambidexterity, we propose a

cross-level framework for the success-

ful management of inherently conﬂict-

ing demands of innovation.

Tensions of Innovation:

Theoretical Perspectives

A pervasive theme in research on orga-

nizational innovation is that innovation is

characterized by tensions (Lewis, Welsh,

Dehler, & Green, 2002), paradoxes (Miron

et al., 2004), contradictions (King, Ander-

son, & West, 1991), dilemmas (Benner &

Tushman, 2003), and the so-called dark

side of innovation processes (Anderson &

Gasteiger, 2007). Table 1 presents a number

of examples of tensions related to innova-

tion that have been noted in the published

literature. We organize Table 1 by the ref-

erent level of the tension (individual, team,

or organizational) and by whether the ten-

sion is primarily focused on antecedents

of innovation or on innovative processes

and outcomes. The fact that tensions have

been described frequently at all levels of

analysis and with regard to antecedents,

processes, and consequences of innovation

provides what we think is compelling evi-

dence for their pervasiveness within orga-

nizations attempting to innovate.

We propose with others that understand-

ing and managing these tensions is central

to successful innovation and use the terms

conﬂicting demands

and

conﬂicting activ-

ities

to refer to the origins of tensions,

paradoxes, contradictions, and dilemmas.

In the following, we contrast two theo-

retical perspectives and the strategies they

imply for dealing with these tensions. One

strategy deals with tensions by emphasiz-

ing the separation of conﬂicting activi-

ties to different suborganizations or even

different organizations altogether (O’Reilly

& Tushman, 2004). The top management

of the organization is responsible for the

necessary integration of activities that pro-

duce the tensions. In a way, this strategy

deals with tensions by reducing them as

much as possible. This strategy derives from

a dichotomous theory perspective (March,

Sproull, & Tamuz, 1991). We contrast

Dialectic perspective on innovation

307

Table 1.

Tensions of Innovation: Examples at the Individual, Team, and Organizational Levels

Antecedents of innovation Innovation processes and outcomes

Organization

Cultural values and practices for innovation, efﬁciency, and quality (Miron

et al., 2004)

Autonomy and control (Gebert, Boerner, & Lanwehr, 2003)

Organizational routines and dynamic capabilities (Zahra & George, 2002)

Core competencies and core rigidities (Leonard-Barton, 1992)

Prospectors and reactors (Miles & Snow, 1978)

Inertia and change-based momentum (Jansen, 2004)

Exploration and exploitation (March et al., 1991)

The productivity dilemma (Abernathy, 1978)

Incremental and radical innovation (Chandy, Chandy, & Tellis, 1998)

Discontinuous innovation (Christensen, 1997)

Inventing the future versus ﬁtting strategy to competence (Hamel &

Prahalad, 1994)

Dysfunctional consequences of innovation: for example, lowered

short-term proﬁts (Anderson & Gasteiger, 2007)

Team

Transformational leadership and initiating structure (Keller, 2006) Exploration and exploitation in teams (Taylor & Greve, 2006)

Creativity and standardization (Gilson, Mathieu, Shalley, & Ruddy, 2005) Alignment and adaptability (Gibson & Birkinshaw, 2004)

Team diversity (e.g., Hulsheger, Anderson, & Salgado, 2008)

Divergent team processes: for example, minority dissent (De Dreu, 2002)

Convergent team processes: for example, shared vision (Hulsheger

et al., 2008)

Team creativity (Pirola-Merlo & Mann, 2004) and idea evaluation,

selection, and implementation in teams (Farr, Sin, & Tesluk, 2003)

Radicalness of work group innovation (West & Anderson, 1996)

Dysfunctional consequences of innovation: for example, interpersonal

conﬂict in teams (Anderson & Gasteiger, 2007)

Individual

Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness (George & Zhou, 2001)

Artistic/investigative and conventional interests (Holland &

Gottfredson, 1992)

Divergent and convergent thinking (Guilford, 1967)

Adaptors and innovators (Kirton, 1976)

Positive and negative mood (George & Zhou, 2007)

Promotion and prevention focus (Forster, Higgins, & Taylor-Bianco, 2003)

Learning and performance goal orientations (Yeo & Neal, 2004)

External rewards and intrinsic motivation (Collins & Amabile, 1999)

Explorative and exploitative activities of individuals (Mom, Van Den

Bosch, & Volberda, 2007)

Ideation–implementation dilemma (Kimberly & Evanisko, 1981)

Opportunistic action regulation (Hacker, 2003)

Dysfunctional consequences of innovation: for example, increased

stress levels (Anderson & Gasteiger, 2007)

308

R. Bledow et al.

the dichotomous approach with a second

theoretical perspective that argues that a

strict separation of conﬂicting activities to

suborganizations leads to disadvantages.

Given that a system has sufﬁcient levels

of internal complexity (Brown & Eisenhardt,

1997), the tensions should be kept within

the system to be managed rather than

organized ‘‘out’’ of the system.

Both the dichotomous (keep separate)

and dialectic (integrate and manage) per-

spectives concur that the innovation process

poses potentially conﬂicting task demands

on individuals, teams, and organizations.

By task demands, we refer to the patterns

of requisite activity an individual, team, or

organization must engage in to achieve an

outcome. Innovation confronts individuals,

teams, and organizations with fundamen-

tally different demands in several important

and unavoidable ways.

First, the demands of innovation dif-

fer from the demands of routine perfor-

mance. Although routine performance is

based on the exploitation of knowledge,

skills, and abilities that emphasize quality

and efﬁciency criteria, innovation requires

exploratory action and creative thinking.

People and teams who need to be creative

and innovative must crave newness and be

curious, whereas people and teams who

are supposed to produce efﬁciently must be

able to close their minds to new ideas that

just interrupt the clear pattern of existing

routines and hinder the further development

of those routines into ever more efﬁcient

production.

Second, the innovation process itself

encompasses different sets of activities, such

as those related to idea generation and

innovation implementation: These sets of

activities are linked to different or con-

ﬂicting antecedents. For instance, granting

autonomy is linked to the generation of new

ideas (Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004),

whereas initiating structure is related to

the success of implementing incremental

innovation (Keller, 2006). Maximizing the

conditions fostering creativity is unlikely to

translate directly into innovation because

innovation encompasses much more than

idea generation. Indeed, the maximization

of factors that facilitate the development

of new ideas is likely to simultaneously

cause conditions that may inhibit idea

implementation and thus innovation over-

all. For example, Xerox Parc developed

many innovations in software design, PC

hardware, and PC connectivity. The creativ-

ity of this group was enormous. In addition,

these innovations were often implemented

in products. However, Xerox made little

economic use of these enormously cre-

ative new products that were essentially

fed into innovations marketed by Apple

and Microsoft (Bergin, 2006; Miller & Stein-

berg, 2006).

Third, there are different types of innova-

tion: An innovation is incremental when it

builds on and exploits existing products and

processes; an innovation is radical or dis-

ruptive if it departs strongly from the status

quo (Benner & Tushman, 2003). Incremen-

tal innovation leads to expected increases

in mean levels of performance, whereas

radical innovation creates variability in per-

formance (potential for high losses or high

returns). The expected level of returns is

lower for radical than for incremental inno-

vation (Taylor & Greve, 2006). We assume

with others that for radical innovation the

problem of conﬂicting task demands of

innovation is more pronounced than for

incremental innovation, and the manage-

ment of tensions is particularly challeng-

ing (Christensen, 1997). However, even

incremental innovation requires different

performance activities, and the emergent

logic of incremental innovation can chal-

lenge the established logic and climate for

working practices (Bouwen & Fry, 1991).

After all, an innovation means by deﬁnition

that something new is done, produced, or

serviced—new to the context in which the

organization has operated up to that point.

Dichotomous perspective on innovation:

Creation–implementation and exploration –

exploitation

Proposition 1. Creation–implement-

ation and exploration–exploitation are con-

ceptual dichotomies that refer to potentially

Dialectic perspective on innovation

309

conﬂicting activities. However, both seem-

ingly contradictory activities are intertwined

and mutually dependent.

We label one approach to understanding

the tensions of innovation a

dichotomous

theory perspective

because it emphasizes

the fundamental dichotomies of organi-

zational innovation and their respective

inconsistencies: creation–implementation

and exploration–exploitation. The dichoto-

mous theory perspective regards idea gen-

eration and implementation as two distinct

activities that should be separated in terms

of time and often even with regard to peo-

ple. The separation of people is based on

the fact that some people are more creative

than others, whereas others may be better

at implementation and the maintenance of

newly implemented ideas. Once an idea

has been developed in the creative phase,

the implementation is conceptualized to be

the execution of an idea that is largely

ﬁxed. Particularly, when different people

are involved or if tasks are rigidly structured

into phases, the differentiation of creation

and implementation is emphasized. How-

ever, as we will elaborate later, creation

and implementation are intertwined and

mutually dependent activities, and difﬁ-

culties are likely to result if a strategy of

clearly separating the two sets of activities is

pursued.

The second basic dichotomy is the dis-

tinction between exploration and exploita-

tion. ‘‘Exploration includes things cap-

tured by terms such as search, varia-

tion, risk taking, experimentation, play,

ﬂexibility, discovery, innovation. Exploita-

tion includes such things as reﬁnement,

choice, production, efﬁciency, selection,

implementation, execution’’ (March et al.,

1991; p. 71). Thus, both dichotomies are

directly related as exploration encom-

passes creative idea generation, whereas

implementation is a subset of exploita-

tion. Extending the work by March et al.

(1991), Benner and Tushman (2003) used

the term ‘‘productivity dilemma’’ to refer to

the difﬁculties organizations face as they

are supposed to be both exploring and

exploiting technologies and markets. An

organization aiming at sustainable perfor-

mance needs to exploit and adapt current

products and processes and explore new

products and processes. However, explo-

ration and exploitation activities compete

for scarce resources (March et al., 1991)

and pursuing both activities has been

proposed to pose inconsistent psycholog-

ical demands on individuals, teams, and

organizations (Smith & Tushman, 2005).

Therefore, the standard suggestion is to

make it possible for organizations to be

both exploitative and explorative; however,

because of the inherent tensions, these two

functions of the organization need to be

separated—often in different locations with

different personnel and even in suborgani-

zations that are distinct from the mother

ﬁrm. This type of organization is known as

the

ambidextrous organization

(Benner &

Tushman, 2003; Gibson & Birkinshaw,

2004). One example is IBM, which devel-

oped its personal computers with a com-

pletely different set of employees than its

standard mainframes (Hamel & Prahalad,

1994). Although research about explo-

ration–exploitation has primarily focused

on the organizational level of analysis, the

logic underlying the dichotomous strategy

can be extended to lower levels in an orga-

nization. For example, within a team the

tensions between activities can be reduced

by creating ﬁxed roles around either more

explorative or more exploitative tasks.

Although there is empirical support for

the theoretical proposition that perform-

ing both activities leads to better organi-

zational results (He & Wong, 2004), the

assumption that exploration and exploita-

tion need to be separated has, to our

knowledge, not been empirically tested.

Not denying the trade offs and inconsis-

tencies that can arise, we doubt that this

is a law of nature. For example, Gilson,

Mathieu, Shalley, and Ruddy (2005) have

demonstrated that creativity and standard-

ization—creativity being explorative and

standardization exploitative—can not only

co-occur within work teams but actually

interact to bring about superior performance

in terms of customer satisfaction.

310

R. Bledow et al.

Although exploration and exploitation

may lead to tensions and trade offs, they

can co-occur and be as much functionally

interdependent as they are in conﬂict. For

instance, the separation of exploratory from

exploitative units may reduce inconsisten-

cies, such that R&D departments can more

easily explore without being constrained

by a current way of doing things or by a

production-focused time horizon for goal

accomplishment; this approach may, how-

ever, also create new problems and loss

of synergies with other departments that

are responsible for the implementation and

marketing of new products (Westerman,

McFarlan, & Iansiti, 2006). Companies

have anecdotally reported unforeseen dif-

ﬁculties when they have kept research

and development in their headquarters but

moved production to low-cost countries.

As the production base is no longer easily

available, R&D departments face problems

because production units frequently serve

as a source of ideas and as an opportu-

nity to test the feasibility of ideas and their

implementation.

The problems of the dichotomous per-

spective that we note with this brief dis-

cussion lead us to propose an alternative

approach that we label a dialectic perspec-

tive on innovation.

A dialectic perspective on innovation

The thread of common meaning which

runs through ... four conceptions of

dialectic [i.e., those of Plato, Aristotle,

Kant, and Hegel] is to be found in

the principle of opposition. In each of

them dialectic either begins or ends

with some sort of intellectual conﬂict,

or develops and then resolves such

oppositions (Adler, 1952, p. 350).

To advance our understanding of innova-

tion, we propose dialectic reasoning as

a useful framework. The common thread

underlying the use of the term

dialectic

in Western philosophy is a focus on con-

tradictions and the attempt to overcome

contradictions in favor of higher order inte-

gration. For other dialectic approaches, in

particular eastern philosophies and ‘‘east-

ern ways of thinking’’ more generally, the

emphasis is more on acceptance and tol-

erance of contradictions rather than active

change toward a synthesis (Nisbett, Peng,

Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001). In accordance

with our cultural background and the phe-

nomenon we study—the intentional intro-

duction of new ideas that brings about inno-

vation—we follow a dialectic approach in

the tradition of Western philosophy. Dialec-

tic thinking emphasizes that reality is in a

constant state of ﬂux and that conﬂicting

forces underlie the dynamic nature of both

reality and human thinking (e.g., Engels,

1940). Dialectic thinking stresses the mutual

dependence of concepts and phenomena

and their interrelationships. For instance,

from a dialectic point of view, the mean-

ing of a construct such as promotion focus

is partly derived from implicitly contrast-

ing it with its counterpart of prevention

focus (Forster, Higgins, & Taylor-Bianco,

2003; Higgins, 1997).

From a dialectic perspective, we argue

that the tensions between the above

dichotomies, between creativity and imple-

mentation, and between exploration and

exploitation should be kept within the

same organizational system because they

are interdependent. For example, it is pre-

cisely the ability to discuss conﬂicting ideas

within a cross-functional team that leads

to innovation (Lovelace, Shapiro, & Wein-

gart, 2001).

Dialectic reasoning is inherently moti-

vated as its goal is to overcome a dualism,

a higher order integration of conﬂicting

parts in the form of a new synthesis.

Toward the goal of advancing our under-

standing of innovation, we apply dialec-

tic reasoning to overcome the static and

dichotomous way of thinking that pre-

vails in much of the extant innovation

research. We discuss how conﬂicting forces

can be managed to achieve a synthesis

in the form of successful innovation and

propose that dialectic thinking can spur

innovation. Indeed, Riegel (1973) argued

that innovative activities ‘‘are dominated by

playful manipulations of contradictions and

Dialectic perspective on innovation

311

by conceiving issues integratively which

have been torn apart by formal opera-

tional thinking’’ (p. 363; see also Peng &

Nisbett, 1999), thus, by thinking in a dialec-

tic manner.

At the most abstract level, the well-

known formula of thesis, antithesis, and

synthesis describes the process of ongoing

negation central to dialectic reasoning. The

synthesis that resolves the opposition of

thesis and antithesis already contains a new

dialectic process: It becomes the next thesis

that results in another antithesis, which can

again be developed into a higher form of

synthesis. This is a powerful description

of change processes in general (Weick &

Quinn, 1999): From a speciﬁc situation

with its routines, norms, and beliefs (the

thesis) emerges some dissatisfaction with

the status quo, motivating a change process

(the antithesis). The synthesis is an outcome

from the change process, which carries

the old and embraces the new at the

same time. However, because the new

synthesis produces new problems, it also

produces new antitheses (Festinger [1983]

has pointed this out as the dynamics of

human cultural development).

Proposition 2. Every state of an orga-

nization leads to its contradiction and

negation at some point. Thus, there is a

never-ending cycle of continuing innova-

tions that is based on recurring antitheses

and syntheses.

We suggest that this abstract formula of

thesis, antithesis, and synthesis describes

the innovation process quite well, because

innovation usually implies that one negates

something that currently exists. At the same

time, however, innovation cannot be com-

pletely ‘‘free’’ from the inﬂuence of what

previously existed. A popular example is the

fact that the ﬁrst cars were essentially ‘‘horse

carriages without a horse.’’ The dialectic

process of antithesis and synthesizing led

to a series of innovative developments that

integrated better aerodynamics, progress of

engine technology, and so forth.

Another example is the innovation of

lean production by Toyota (Womack, Jones,

& Roos, 1990), which ﬁrst started with the

thesis of traditional Japanese production of

cars by craftsmanship. An antithesis based

on the use of modern production technol-

ogy was developed, but this antithesis was

constrained by postwar Japanese poverty;

therefore, production could not mimic the

American antithesis of Fordian assembly

lines with its vast superiority in terms of stan-

dardization and routinization. Thus, a differ-

ent antithesis had to be used, which led to a

synthesis that allowed old craftsmanship to

be lifted up into a new synthesis called

lean

production

(or, more accurately, the inclu-

sion of certain facets of craftsmanship, such

as lifelong employment, consistent devel-

opment of employee skills, and frequent

performance improvement suggestions by

blue collar workers). Again, lean production

underwent a number of innovative revisions

once the basic idea was developed. This led

to the most powerful production machine

in the world of automobiles (Womack et al.,

1990). Once lean production was tried out-

side the Japanese context, this led again to a

set of new theses, new antitheses, and new

syntheses (Young, 1992).

In the tradition of dialectic thinking,

organizational innovation can be concep-

tualized as a dialectic process, the resulting

innovation being a speciﬁc instance of a

synthesis. An initial idea of a new product

or organizational process and the status quo

are the contradictory forces at the beginning

of the process. The successful transforma-

tion of the status quo to incorporate a new

idea can be regarded as the synthesis in

this dialectic process. The result of inno-

vation is not identical to the initial idea

but ‘‘resolves’’ the opposition of that idea

and the former state.1The synthesis carries

elements of both parts of the system— the

thesis and the antithesis—but integrates and

supplements them.

Analytical separation of the status quo

that is to be changed and the new idea,

1. The German term for resolve ‘‘Aufheben’’ is useful

here because it denotes a double meaning: First,

the synthesis does away (aufheben) with the

contradiction of the thesis and the antithesis, but

at the same time it lifts up (aufheben) the level of

knowledge (in the synthesis).

312

R. Bledow et al.

as contradictory categories, can obscure

that both are interdependent. New ideas

originate from and are embedded in the

status quo, and the status quo is itself the

result of prior ideas. Fundamental creativity

can lead to new ideas, but we argue that

those ideas are also subject to incremental

improvements, new ideas that emerge

because details do not work well (i.e.,

detail orientation) and because errors may

appear unexpectedly even in routinized

work and lead to new thinking. Thus, there

are several avenues in which an antithesis

can be developed to stimulate innovation.

An example in psychological science for

these different avenues is the approaches

of Piaget and Tolman in their critique of

behaviorism. Piaget (1947) made an all-

out attack on behaviorism whereas Tolman

(1932) started from an empirical critique

of behaviorism that was still wedded

to behaviorist principles. Nevertheless,

both came to similar scientiﬁc ideas that

emphasized cognitive concepts. Extending

the focus from innovation processes to

the antecedent conditions of innovation,

dialectic reasoning requires scrutinizing the

relationship between antecedent conditions

and outcomes.

Proposition 3. Antecedent conditions

have inconsistent consequences for the

different requisite activities of innovation.

Both sides of many conceptual dichotomies

have functional value for some of the

activities underlying innovation.

An example for inconsistent conse-

quences of antecedent conditions on inno-

vation is diversity. Diversity of individu-

als in teams and organizations holds the

promise of spurring innovation as differ-

ent perspectives are available. However,

diversity can lead to information elabora-

tion, thereby fostering innovation, but can

also lead to social categorization processes

that hinder innovation (we later elaborate

on ﬁndings about team diversity; Van Knip-

penberg, De Dreu, & Homan, 2004). The

hypothesized role of individuals’ regula-

tory focus for innovation can serve as an

example for the functional value of both

sides of a conceptual dichotomy. Although

a high promotion focus aimed at moving

an idea forward even in the face of uncer-

tainty and potential failure can have high

functional value for innovation success, the

same is true for a prevention focus. Detailed

elaboration of information and suspension

of early decision making and commitment

to a ﬁrst idea can be as valuable (Forster

et al., 2003).

The dialectic approach leads one to think

differently about paradoxes. Originally, a

paradox ‘‘denotes contradictory, mutually

exclusive elements that exist simultaneously

and for which no synthesis or choice is

possible or necessarily desirable’’ (Cameron

& Quinn, 1988, p. 2). A dialectic approach

suggests that the paradoxes discussed in

the innovation literature can be resolved

by taking the complexity of innovation

processes and the multiple pathways to

innovation into account.

Let us contrast the dialectic theory per-

spective with the dichotomous theory per-

spective described above. The dichotomous

perspective regards idea generation and

implementation models of innovation as

two separate activities that need to be sepa-

rated in terms of time and often with regard

to personnel. Once the creativity phase

is completed, the implementation phase is

conceptualized to be the execution of the

novel idea that is ﬁxed once and for all. In

contrast, a dialectic perspective emphasizes

that creative processes and implementa-

tion are intertwined and mutually depen-

dent activities. Creative activity does not

only serve as input to idea implementa-

tion but is required throughout the process

as unforeseen problems and opportunities

arise and subtasks such as product compo-

nents, production processes, and marketing

strategies are addressed (Mumford, Scott,

Gaddis, & Strange, 2002). The same idea

will lead to different outcomes depend-

ing on the speciﬁc circumstances of an

organization as ideas interact with the envi-

ronment in which they are implemented

and transformed. Many stakeholders are

involved in any organizational innovation,

which should be regarded as the result

of collective action. Thus, innovation at

Dialectic perspective on innovation

313

the team or organizational level emerges

through processes in which the contribu-

tions of different actors are integrated, and

the ﬁnal result is different from what the

actors initially intended (Hargrave & Van

De Ven, 2006).

A Dialectic Review of Research

on Innovation at Multiple

Organizational Levels

The steps commonly assumed to describe

the path from ideas to their implementation

consist of idea generation, idea evaluation

and selection, idea mobilization, building

a prototype, implementing the prototype

into a ﬁnal product, and marketing the

product toward its successful penetration

to the market (Amabile, 1988; Farr, Sin, &

Tesluk, 2003; West, 2002b). Along this

process, different factors can either facilitate

or inhibit the innovation process. In the

following sections, we review the research

literature on the steps from idea generation

to its implementation, moving from the

individual to the organizational level, to

discuss some propositions that follow from

a dialectic approach. We are not advocating

a phase model of innovation but are

using these familiar terms heuristically as

convenient parcels of an outline of the

innovation process. We demonstrate that

the duality of competing processes exists

not only between these steps but also within

each step.

Step 1: The generation of new and

useful ideas by individuals.

Proposition 4. There are multiple

pathways to developing creative ideas, such

as necessity, slack resources, or errors.

Activities commonly considered as ‘‘uncre-

ative,’’ such as attention to detail, can lead

to a point at which useful new ideas can

ﬁrst be initiated.

One focus of psychological research

has been on creative idea generation.

Creativity is often deﬁned as the gener-

ation of new ideas that are useful and

appropriate (Amabile, 2000; West, 2002b).

Research has found that different and even

conﬂicting factors can stimulate idea gen-

eration, and we infer there are multiple

‘‘entry points’’ and pathways to the gener-

ation of new and potentially useful ideas:

Two competing forces—necessity and lim-

ited resources, but also slack and ‘‘garbage

cans’’ (see below)—stimulate creativity.

New ideas can arise in the face of opportu-

nities, such as technological developments,

or can be stimulated by pressing prob-

lems, necessities, and distress with the

status quo. These different entry points of

idea generation are reﬂected in conﬂict-

ing theoretical propositions and empirical

ﬁndings about the importance of slack

resources for creativity. Slack resources

can enable individuals and organizations

to develop and explore ideas even if they

do not lead to tangible results in the

short term (Damanpour, 1991; Voss, Sir-

deshmukh, & Voss, 2008). Cohen, March,

and Olsen (1972) coined the term ‘‘garbage

can,’’ which refers to a form of orga-

nized anarchies, consisting of solutions

looking for issues to which there might

be an answer. However, not only the

saying ‘‘necessity is the mother of inven-

tion’’ questions whether slack resources

are a prerequisite for innovation. Envi-

ronmental threat (Voss et al., 2008), time

pressure (Baer & Oldham, 2006; Ohly, Son-

nentag, & Pluntke, 2006), and sheer neces-

sity (Gasper, 2003) can also be drivers of

idea generation. These are opposing ideas.

A dialectic viewpoint would suggest that

a synthesis is possible: Threat, time pres-

sure, and necessity can inﬂuence an active

approach to dealing with problems, and

such an active approach may lead to higher

creativity that includes developing creative

ideas with a goal-oriented approach. In our

thinking, personal initiative is inﬂuenced

by these threats and necessities (Binnewies,

Ohly, & Sonnentag, 2007; Fay & Sonnentag,

2002), and personal initiative implies cre-

ativity (Frese, Teng, & Wijnen, 1999). How-

ever, the complete lack of slack resources

may lead to the expectation that nothing

works well in the organization, and, there-

fore, there is little outcome control and

action control—this leads to a lower degree

314

R. Bledow et al.

of personal initiative, which includes lower

creativity (Frese, Garst, & Fay, 2007).

Proposition 5. Providing an environ-

ment that allows for ideas to emerge is

useful, but rewarding creativity and struc-

turing creativity are advisable when goals

can be speciﬁed.

Another area in which contradictory

propositions exist is the inﬂuence of orga-

nizational practices on individuals’ motiva-

tion to engage in creative activities. Leaders

can chose to increase employee creativity

by setting goals for creativity and reward-

ing creative behavior (Eisenberger, Pierce,

& Cameron, 1999; Shalley, 1991). Extrinsic

motivators, such as money, can enhance

creativity because individuals are motivated

to focus on the generation of new and orig-

inal ideas (Eisenberger & Rhoades, 2001;

Livne-Tarandach, Erez, & Erev, 2004). A

leader may specify what kind of creative

ideas he or she is seeking. A project man-

ager of a marketing campaign may ask for

new ideas related to how new customers

can be addressed and further constrain

the options he or she considers feasible.

This aligns individuals with the leaders’

concept of what kind of new ideas add

value. Setting goals and rewarding cre-

ativity is contradicted by the idea that

intrinsic motivation is the main motiva-

tional driver of creativity (Collins & Ama-

bile, 1999). The recommendation that fol-

lows from intrinsic motivation is to create

a work environment that facilitates creativ-

ity rather than directly rewarding creativity.

This perspective questions the usefulness

of goal setting and rewarding creativity

because it may undermine intrinsic moti-

vation (Amabile, 2000).

A synthesis is possible between these

contradictory ideas. Creativity goals and

extrinsic motivators increase creativity

whenever the goal to be creative clearly

refers to a speciﬁc task (Shalley, 1991); this

is often the case when creative ideas are

implemented. More likely than not, creative

ideas are very important in the imple-

mentation ‘‘phase’’ (Mumford et al., 2002).

Whenever a goal cannot yet be speciﬁed

for a task, it pays to provide environments

in which there is unconditional acceptance

and intrinsic motivation (Collins & Amabile,

1999; West, 2002b). A dialectic viewpoint

suggests that one approach, namely free-

dom that provides unconditional support

for creativity, may produce the success of

its opposite, namely goal-oriented creativ-

ity and extrinsic motivators, once the novel

idea is deemed to be successful by an orga-

nization. In other words, the thesis freedom

leads to its antithesis whenever creative

ideas are translated into concrete prod-

ucts—in this later ‘‘phase,’’ goal-oriented

creativity is probably successful. Although

this resembles the implementation ‘‘phase,’’

we maintain that creativity is still needed;

therefore, it is not a purely new phase even

if the motivation for this creativity may be

externally developed. Just so that we are

not misunderstood that we want to intro-

duce a phase model again, we hasten to

add that even at that point of the inno-

vation process, it may be useful to have

undirected, non-goal-oriented sessions of

creativity.

Proposition 6. Fostering positive moods

facilitates creativity. However, the func-

tional value of negative moods, such as

distress of the status quo and effortful per-

sistence, need to be acknowledged as part

of goal-directed innovation.

Evidence for our general claim that

highly different circumstances and pro-

cesses can lead to idea generation also

comes from the literature investigating the

mood-creativity link. There is consistent evi-

dence on the creativity enhancing impact

of positive moods (e.g., Amabile, Barsade,

Mueller, & Staw, 2005; Isen, Daubman, &

Nowicki, 1987). At the same time, nega-

tive mood can also foster creative thinking

under certain conditions. George and Zhou

(2002, 2007) have pointed out that both

negative as well as positive moods may

have a useful function: Negative mood

promotes creativity when support for cre-

ativity and positive moods are present

because negative mood signals a prob-

lematic state of affairs, leading individuals

to systematically address the problem at

hand. Fong (2006) found that experiencing

Dialectic perspective on innovation

315

the state of emotional ambivalence —

the simultaneous presence of positive and

negative emotions—leads to a state of

higher creativity. De Dreu, Baas, and Nijs-

tad (2008) suggested a dual pathway to

creativity model in which creativity can

be achieved through effortful persistence

or a state of positive mood. Thus, the emo-

tional underpinnings of creativity can vary,

and creativity can emerge from a complex

interaction of seemingly contradictory emo-

tional tendencies.

Proposition 7. Innovation requires the

regulation of exploration and exploitation

and their antecedents (e.g., divergent and

convergent thinking, learning and perfor-

mance orientation). Exploitative activities

and expertise provide the foundation for

useful new ideas but need to be challenged

by explorative activities for new ideas to

emerge. New ideas that emerge, in turn,

require exploitative activities to be success-

fully implemented.

Creative idea generation is subsumed

under exploration within the conceptual

dichotomy of exploration and exploitation

activities in organizations. However, con-

ceptually isolating creative idea generation

from exploitative activities and empirically

investigating it as an isolated phenomenon

obscures that creative idea generation is

embedded in and inﬂuenced by actions at

work, be they exploratory or exploitative.

Paying high attention to detail, developing

routines, reﬁning and exploiting skills —that

is, engaging in activities that appear anti-

thetical to creativity—can actually provide

a basis for new ideas. Detailed exper-

tise in a domain enables individuals to

come up with ideas that are both new

and useful (e.g., Conti, Coon, & Ama-

bile, 1996; Taylor & Greve, 2006). Rou-

tinization and standardization can free up

the cognitive resources required for cre-

ative thought (Ohly, Sonnentag, & Pluntke,

2006). Engaging and excelling in exploita-

tive activities are essential in leading to

a point at which it ﬁrst becomes clear

that an established way of doing things

has its limits and that the incremental

value of a current product or service

for meeting customer needs is limited.

Although essential preconditions for cre-

ative ideas, current skills and expertise

are double-edged swords: Core competen-

cies can become core rigidities (Leonard-

Barton, 1992), individuals may continue to

use available problem-solving solutions and

routines even when more effective ways of

doing things are available (Luchins, 1942),

and adherence to existing rules and guide-

lines can keep people from experimenting

and inventing new procedures (George &

Zhou, 2001). How do we resolve conﬂict-

ing propositions on the role of expertise and

routinization for innovation? Based on deep

and broad expertise and well-developed

routines, innovation can be spurred by

engaging in the process of negation, that

is, questioning the current way of doing

things and combining available knowledge

in new ways.

Given the different pathways to creativ-

ity and the fact that creativity can be based

on activities that appear antithetical to cre-

ativity, simplistic recommendations based

on isolated relationships between determi-

nants and creativity seem misguided, even

if those relationships are well established. If

innovation is the desired outcome, making

recommendations is even more challeng-

ing because creativity is only one element

of successful innovation. Implementation,

the transformation of ideas to new prod-

ucts and processes, is arguably a greater

challenge than idea generation and is para-

doxically the area with less research atten-

tion (West, 2002a).

Step 2: The implementation of new and use-

ful ideas.

Organizational scholars have long argued

that idea generation and idea implemen-

tation are fundamentally different activities

and that independent or even conﬂicting

determinants, such as personality or goal

orientations, inﬂuence performance of the

respective activities (e.g., Farr et al., 2003;

Farr & Ford, 1990; Kimberly & Evanisko,

1981). As both are necessary and potentially

conﬂicting, innovation poses fundamental

316

R. Bledow et al.

problems for self-regulation of individu-

als aiming to bring about innovation and

management of innovation in organiza-

tional settings. The creation of new ideas

is an exploratory activity that is based on

divergent processes and leads to increases

in variability. In contrast, implementation

activities are based on convergent pro-

cesses aimed at exploiting the potential

value of new ideas and leading to a reduc-

tion of variability. When committed to

a new idea, activities need to converge

around the implementation of that idea.

Persistence is required to overcome bar-

riers and resistance (Frese & Fay, 2001).

Individuals also need to resist engaging in

divergent activities that do not serve the

implementation of the chosen idea. Farr

et al. (2003) have suggested that learning

orientation is related to explorative idea

generation, whereas performance orienta-

tion contributes to exploitative idea imple-

mentation. Learning orientation is reﬂected

in a desire to explore, seek challenging

situations, and engage in deep process-

ing (Yeo & Neal, 2004). Performance ori-

entation focuses on demonstrating one’s

ability, avoiding mistakes, and adhering

to normative performance standards. Both

orientations being required for innovating

speaks for rejecting the tyranny of the

‘‘or’’ and embracing an emphatic ‘‘and’’

approach (Cameron & Quinn, 1988; Lewis,

2000) in contrast to emphasizing the one

or the other. At the same time, however,

individuals can be required to be either

strongly performance or learning oriented at

any given point in time if this is demanded

by the task. The challenge for individuals

is thus to be aware of the dynamic nature

of the task demands and to switch between

different mind and action sets.

Proposition 8. Openness to Experi-

ence and Conscientiousness facilitate dif-

ferent requisite activities of innovation.

Individuals disposed toward either high

Openness to Experience or high Consci-

entiousness need to invest regulatory effort

to meet all requisite demands of innovation.

As far as personality is concerned,

research largely conﬁrms the intuitively

appealing proposition that psychological

characteristics that are conceptually linked

to creativity are consistently related to

innovative behavior. More creative indi-

viduals are open to experience (George &

Zhou, 2001), demonstrate divergent think-

ing styles (Kirton, 1976), and are uncon-

ventional (Frese et al., 1999). However,

these are hardly characteristics that go

hand in hand with persistence, attention

to detail, and the rigorous implementa-

tion of others’ ideas—the latter are all

necessary aspects of innovation implemen-

tation (Miron et al., 2004). Conscientious-

ness is a trait that should only be related

to implementation and should inhibit cre-

ativity, particularly its subfactor of depend-

ability. Thus, placing a strong emphasis

on either Openness to Experience or on

Conscientiousness in selection and place-

ment decisions for R&D teams may be

problematic (Hulsheger, Anderson, & Sal-

gado, 2009a).

From a dialectic perspective, the cru-

cial issue is to synthesize the qualities of

both Openness to Experience and Consci-

entiousness for innovation. On the indi-

vidual level, we expect this to be less

difﬁcult for individuals high on both dimen-

sions compared with individuals disposed

toward either high Conscientiousness or

high Openness to Experience. Individuals

need to invest high regulatory effort to

meet the demands of innovation that are

inconsistent with their dispositions. Indi-

viduals highly open to experience need to

invest regulatory effort to conform to agreed

courses of action, ‘‘close’’ their minds at

times, and focus on implementation when-

ever this is required. In contrast, individu-

als who are highly conscientious without

simultaneously being open to experience

need to invest effort to challenge outdated

ways of doing things, break rules hindering

innovation, and take the risk of sometimes

not being dependable concerning routine

tasks for the sake of innovating. This would

be an aspect of managing or regulating

one’s personality (Rauch & Frese, 2007). As

most individuals are not disposed to easily

perform all requisite activities of innovation,

Dialectic perspective on innovation

317

investing high degrees of regulatory effort is

necessary. This points toward the impor-

tance of an active approach toward work,

such as being proactive (Grifﬁn, Neal, &

Parker, 2007), demonstrating personal ini-

tiative (Frese & Fay, 2001), and being highly

engaged (Macey & Schneider, 2008). On

the level of the individual, we thus pro-

pose an active approach toward work as a

crucial precondition for synthesizing con-

ﬂicting but necessary activities.

Shifting our focus from individuals to

teams, a complementary opportunity of

synthesizing conﬂicting activities becomes

feasible. Teams provide the opportunity

to bring together requisite psychological

qualities that may infrequently co-occur

within individual persons.

Idea generation and implementation in

teams.

Proposition 9. Given frequent occur-

rence of convergent team processes, such

as conformity and consensus seeking, diver-

gent activities need to be encouraged, for

instance, by appreciating minority dissent

and challenging the content of the vision

the team is pursuing. However, outcomes

from such divergent team processes also

need to be reintegrated, for instance, by

clearly communicating a new vision.

Corresponding to the research focus on

creativity and divergent thinking at the

individual level, researchers have put for-

ward the thesis that team member diversity

and divergent processes in teams, such as

minority dissent and task-related conﬂict,

fuel innovation (e.g., De Dreu, 2002; Shin

& Zhou, 2007). Indeed, meta-analytic evi-

dence at the team level (Hulsheger, Ander-

son & Salgado, 2008) supports the value

of team member diversity for innovation.

Diversity of team members in terms of

educational background, knowledge, and

demographics can be supportive of inno-

vation (Shin & Zhou, 2007). However,

cultural diversity was found to have a neg-

ative impact on team innovation (Gibson

& Gibbs, 2006). Minority dissent has been

found to be a facilitator of innovation, but

only if overt task reﬂexivity about the team’s

objectives and processes was high (De

Dreu, 2002). Further research by De Dreu

and West (2001) showed that allowing team

members to participate in decision making

resulted in minority dissent support of inno-

vation. For task conﬂict, meta-analytic ﬁnd-

ings suggest neither a generally positive nor

a negative effect on innovation (Hulsheger

et al., 2008). There is, however, some sup-

port for a curvilinear relationship of task

conﬂict with innovation, such that moder-

ate levels of task conﬂict are optimal (De

Dreu, 2006). Furthermore, as task conﬂict

is unrelated to team innovation across stud-

ies, it does not seem to be detrimental, per

se, to team innovation. This is different for

team performance as an outcome where

there is a clear negative relationship (De

Dreu & Weingart, 2003). Thus, some teams

with task conﬂict may actually be capable

of leveraging the conﬂict for the enhance-

ment of innovation, even though this is not

generally the case and task conﬂict impedes

overall team performance.

Teams aiming to innovate are required

not only to develop and explore new ideas,

but also to align team members toward

the common goal of innovation and to

achieve other performance criteria, such

as quality and efﬁciency demands (Miron

et al., 2004). Thus, an antithetical propo-

sition to the emphasis of diversity and

divergent processes stresses the impor-

tance of convergence in teams (Pearce &

Ensley, 2004). Indeed, meta-analytic evi-

dence on shared vision and task orienta-

tion as two factors supporting convergence

and integration of team members’ activ-

ities toward common goals corroborates

this proposition (Hulsheger et al., 2008).

Shared vision and task orientation are more

closely related to successful innovation than

the variability-enhancing factors of diver-

sity and task conﬂict, and are among the

strongest determinants of successful team

innovation. Visions can lead to either incre-

mental or transformational goals. Thus,

visions can help with incremental and

with radical innovation. Visions may lead

to incremental innovation, driven by the

attempt to implement the vision as fast

318

R. Bledow et al.

as possible and be the ﬁrst mover in the

market. However, transformational visions

exist, for example, in politics, Martin Luther

King’s dream about equal opportunities for

African Americans, or the vision to reach the

moon, which led to dramatic technological

innovations.

In line with the dialectic approach, we

suggest that as effective as a shared vision

is for innovation, it can have undesired

consequences if it comes at the expense

of not exploring new possibilities for

radical innovations that lie outside of the

realm of the present vision. The vision of

producing more powerful and faster cars

within a certain technological paradigm

has stimulated innovation in automotive

industries. These innovations have served

their purpose and may even prove useful

for radical future innovations. However,

there have been ample suggestions in

the popular press that the vision of

producing more powerful and faster cars

has been detrimental to divergent thought

and subsequent innovations related to

fuel-efﬁcient cars, new drive technologies,

and low-cost individual mobility. Thus,

through the commonality of purpose and

perspective that a strong vision promotes,

the development of new and divergent

visions may be hindered.

We think the ﬁndings on convergent and

divergent processes in teams are not con-

tradictory but can be resolved. On the basis

of strong convergent and integrative pro-

cesses (e.g., participation in decision mak-

ing, shared vision, team reﬂexivity, and task

orientation), divergent processes can fuel

innovation, whereas convergent processes

alone can lead teams to become locked

into the path they are currently pursuing.

Tensions between convergent and diver-

gent processes need to be actively managed

within a system toward the right balance,

with the empirical evidence speaking for a

predominance of convergent and integra-

tive processes (Hulsheger et al., 2008).

The dynamics of innovation

Proposition 10. The dynamics of inno-

vation can be both orderly and chaotic.

Detailed plans on implementing ideas need

to co-occur with the readiness to ﬂexibly

change and possibly alter a course of action

as unforeseen events occur.

Frequently, stage models are used to

outline the pathway from the generation

of a new idea to its implementation and

routinization (Zaltman, Duncan, & Hol-

bek, 1973). However, stage models can

be misleading if they are interpreted as

describing the actual succession of differ-

ent activities or if they are even taken as

normative guides to how individuals and

teams should proceed when innovating. At

each point in time of the innovation pro-

cess, individuals and teams can shift from

exploring new possibilities to exploiting

what they have already accomplished and

back to exploratory activity. King (1992)

and Cheng and Van de Ven (1996) found

that linear models do not adequately rep-

resent the innovation process. Innovation,

in particular radical innovation, unfolds

in a cyclical and nonlinear fashion rather

than as a sequence of phases (Anderson

et al., 2004; Farr et al., 2003). Performance

episodes of explorative idea generation and

exploitative implementation activities alter-

nate with limited predictability. The rel-

ative weight of different processes shifts

over time. In general, idea creation pro-

cesses tend to be emphasized in the begin-

ning, whereas implementation processes

are more prevalent in the ﬁnal stages of

an innovation project (West, 2002b). How-

ever, even when a project is close to

completion, additional creative activity can

be necessary to deal with unforeseen dis-

turbances (Mumford et al., 2002), and new

ideas may unintentionally emerge that stim-

ulate further innovation. In a particularly

informative study, Cheng and Van de Ven

showed that within a single project the

pattern of events and activities can fre-

quently be chaotic—that is, not random

but unpredictable—whereas at other (later)

times follow a periodic, orderly pattern.

We expect individuals and teams can fol-

low multiple pathways to innovation, some

emphasizing clearly planned approaches,

whereas for others ‘‘order emerges more

Dialectic perspective on innovation

319

from chaos’’ (Cheng & Van de Ven, 1996).

However, neither a rigid approach that tries

to follow a static stage-by-stage model while

ignoring the uncertainty attached to innova-

tion nor an approach where order does not

emerge out of chaos is likely to succeed.

Thus, as important as the development of

detailed implementation plans for innova-

tion is (Frese et al., 2007), equally important

is the ﬂexibility to be responsive to unfore-

seen events, give up previous plans, and to

make fundamental changes to the course of

action.

Organizational level antecedents of

innovation

Proposition 11. As innovation has

emerged from contradictory organizational

structures and cultures, ‘‘one-best-way’’

recommendations for organizational inno-

vation that do not take into account the

particularities of a given organization are

misguided and may even do more harm

than add value.

If we extend our focus from individu-

als and teams to organizations by asking

what kind of organizations have been able

to successfully innovate, we come to the

conclusion that the principle of multiple

pathways also applies for organizational

innovation: Innovation has many different

entry points and can be achieved via mul-

tiple pathways, meaning that the structures

and cultures from which innovation arises

can be different or even oppositional.

At the organizational level of analy-

sis, we know from meta-analytic evidence

(Camis´on-Zornoza, Lapiedra-Alcam´

ı, Sega-

rra-Cipr´es, & Montserrat Boronat-Navarro,

2001; Damanpour, 1991) that larger, spe-

cialized, and functionally diversiﬁed orga-

nizations that possess high degrees of tech-

nical knowledge resources produce more

innovations. In contrast, centralization of

organizations is negatively related to inno-

vation. Although these ﬁndings are some-

what dated, we think they are still infor-

mative about the general factors facilitating

innovation. It may seem paradoxical, but

the mechanisms operating at the level of a

speciﬁc company may be quite opposite to

the relationships that emerge across com-

panies and studies. Large companies may

fail to innovate, and small companies that

are new to a market and lack a well-

developed technical knowledge base may

have a competitive advantage for producing

new products and services in comparison

with large companies.

For example, Christensen’s (1997) work

on disruptive innovation demonstrates that

small companies in the hard-disk industry

have repeatedly entered the market with

radical innovations leading to the failure of

large, established companies, which have

not been able to innovate successfully

because they focused too strongly on their

main customers. In light of the above-

cited meta-analytical ﬁndings, this does not

seem to be a very frequent phenomenon.

Our main point is, again, that caution is

necessary in directly deriving implications

for any particular ﬁrm from our knowledge

about general determinants of innovation

because the entry points and pathways to

successful innovation are manifold.

The idea of different entry points and

pathways to innovation can be illustrated by

describing a group of German companies

that do not ﬁt well our innovative stereotype

but that has been extremely successful

in the recent decades at innovating and

extending its markets (Venohr & Meyer,

2007). These companies are located in

rural areas in the mostly conservative

southwestern part of Germany far away

from any government-funded technology

center and are among the market leaders in

their closely deﬁned technological niche.

The companies are family-owned and run

by professional management. Size and

industry vary highly, including trading

companies with 10,000 employees and

mechanical systems engineering companies

with a few hundred employees. The

most successful of these companies have

been termed ‘‘hidden champions’’ (Simon,

1996). Their workforce is to a large part

rooted in the region. The dominant cultural

focus is on quality, efﬁciency, and process

effectiveness. Labor relations are described

as consensus oriented, ﬂuctuation and

320

R. Bledow et al.

turnover among employees is low, and the

basic organizational values are described

as authoritarian. These companies have

been reported to focus all their resources

on solving a burning problem for a

well-deﬁned customer group, using their

customers as a main source of innovation,

while developing and extending their

core competencies rather than diversifying

widely. They use a highly integrated

business model and have stayed successful

at innovating and growing with this strategy

for several decades. They seem to do most

things different from the norm suggested by

popular management books (Simon, 1996).

This group of companies highlights that

a strategy quite opposite to many recom-

mendations can be highly successful at con-

tinuous innovation. Thus, in the absence of

rigorous empirical evidence and validated

contingency models, prescriptive recom-

mendations on how organizations should

innovate seem misguided (Hamel & Praha-

lad, 1994).

Although we have emphasized through-

out this article the pervasive existence of

conﬂicting demands of innovation for indi-

viduals, teams, and organizations, there is

little empirical research that has directly

examined how conﬂicting demands might

be effectively managed and self-regulated.

In the absence of strong empirical research

on management and self-regulation of con-

ﬂicting demands, we draw on recent the-

oretical developments. Current organiza-

tional theory offers at least one concept that

seems to be useful for understanding how

conﬂicting demands might be managed in

the context of innovation in organizations.

This concept is ambidexterity. By redeﬁning

ambidexterity within our dialectic perspec-

tive and applying it across levels of analysis,

we aim at taking the ﬁrst step toward a

framework that may prove useful for future

research and the practice of innovation.

Ambidexterity—Managing

Conﬂicting Demands at Multiple

Organizational Levels

From the proposition that innovation poses

a variety of different demands, it follows

that individuals and social systems need

to be capable of performing fundamen-

tally different activities and need to be

able to integrate these activities to success-

fully innovate (Smith & Tushman, 2005).

Literally referring to the rare characteris-

tic of some people to be equally adept in

using their left and right hands, the term

ambidexterity

has been used in organiza-

tional science to describe the ability of orga-

nizations to engage in both explorative and

exploitative activities (e.g., O’Reilly & Tush-

man, 2004; Raisch & Birkinshaw, 2008).

Although previous research has primarily

used the term to describe organizations, we

provide a generalized functional deﬁnition

of ambidexterity and extend the concept to

individuals, teams, and leaders.

We deﬁne ambidexterity as the abil-

ity of a complex and adaptive system to

manage and meet conﬂicting demands by

engaging in fundamentally different activi-

ties. On the most general level, ambidex-

terity implies successfully managing the

dichotomy of explorative variability cre-

ation and exploitative variability reduc-

tion. Systems can develop a variety of

different internal structures and processes

to perform fundamentally different activi-

ties. Thus, ambidexterity can take different

shapes. How ambidexterity is achieved can

be differentiated along the lines of inte-

gration and separation of activities. Activi-

ties can be structurally or temporally sep-

arated to different subsystems or across

time (Gupta, Smith, & Shalley, 2006). For

instance, in a team responsible for the

development of a new product, some mem-

bers may concentrate on coming up with

radically new ideas, whereas others focus

on scrutinizing the feasibility and useful-

ness of ideas. The same activities can be

performed by an individual alone switch-

ing back and forth between engaging in

unconstrained creativity and evaluating and

selecting ideas. Management activities and

self-regulatory processes are necessary to

integrate different activities performed by

subsystems or at different points in time.

Regulating the conﬂicting demands of

innovation is not only a challenge for the

Dialectic perspective on innovation

321

upper echelon of an organization but a

phenomenon that spans all levels of an

organization. Individual employees, collec-

tives of employees such as work teams, and

the organization as a whole have to ﬁnd

strategies to deal with conﬂicting demands

to successfully innovate and adapt to chang-

ing markets. Within an organization, depart-

ment, or team, activities can be more or less

separated and distributed to different indi-

viduals. How conﬂicting demands are reg-

ulated at one level affects the regulation at

other levels of an organization (Mahmoud-

Jouini, Charue-Duboc, & Fourcade, 2007).

For instance, if individual employees are

capable of self-regulating conﬂicting activ-

ities, the requirement of leaders to be

directive about what activities need to be

performed is reduced.

Integration of different activities can

occur at a hierarchically higher level, such

as the leader, or by individuals themselves,

for instance, by proactively attending to dif-

ferent and conﬂicting task demands and

being ﬂexible enough to switch between

requisite activities or roles in a team. We

expect that strong separation of activities

to different subsystems will create dys-

functional consequences because synergies

that reside in pursuing both interdependent

activities are lost. As we have previously

noted, exploitative activities can be the

foundation from which useful new ideas

emerge. In addition, the separation of activ-

ities creates new tensions and conﬂicts that

must be managed. This may occur, for

instance, when a new product developed in

an isolated explorative business unit enters

the production routines of exploitative busi-

ness units (Westerman et al., 2006). We

assert that dealing with conﬂicting demands

by high degrees of separation of activities

to subsystems is a second best strategy that

may become necessary if a system does not

have the requisite complexity to manage

internally the conﬂicting demands.

Although in all organizations there are

those individuals, teams, and business units

that focus more on exploring new possibil-

ities, while others focus more on adapting

and exploiting, research has not yet pro-

vided decision aids (Highhouse, 2008) to

indicate the appropriate level and degree

of separation for a given system. Explo-

ration and exploitation activities and ten-

sions between these activities co-occur at

all levels of an organization. Even in an

organization with high exploitative orien-

tation, explorative task demands exist and

vice versa. For example, when implement-

ing process innovations such as just-in-

time-production to streamline a business,

employees’ initiative (which includes cre-

ativity) was important because it allowed

them to explore how to adopt the process

innovation in their particular jobs (Baer &

Frese, 2003). That is, even if the productivity

dilemma between exploration and exploita-

tion is solved by some type of structural

separation, at all levels of the organization

there remain exploration and exploitation

demands that need to be managed because

human thought and action are never solely

explorative or exploitative.

Several authors have emphasized the

need to balance rather than separate explo-

ration and exploitation. Although we agree

with the notion that both activities are nec-

essary and organizations should not focus

on one to the expense of the other, the

idea of a ‘‘balance’’ can be misleading if it

implies that a moderate and equal amount

of exploration and exploitation is always

superior. Over time and depending on

external circumstance such as the dynamics

of the market, the relative importance of dif-

ferent activities can shift (Burgelman, 2002;

Jansen, Van Den Bosch, & Volberda, 2006).

Optimal antecedent conditions of organi-

zational structures, management practices,

and individual dispositions may be quite

different depending on the relative impor-

tance of exploratory and exploitative activ-

ities, although they should always enable

both kinds of activities.

Table 2 presents examples of ambidex-

trous strategies and tactics that could be

implemented at three different levels of

analysis—the individual, team, and orga-

nizational—to deal with the conﬂict posed

by the need to both explore and exploit.

322

R. Bledow et al.

Examples are presented that follow a sepa-

ration strategy (in the separation column)

or an integration strategy (in the active

management and self-regulation columns)

for dealing with conﬂicting demands and

activities. None of these examples is empir-

ically based; rather, we have derived them

primarily from conceptual developments by

organizational theorists and our own dialec-

tic perspective. We organize our discussion

of these examples by level of analysis.

Ambidexterity at the individual level.

Proposition 12. At the level of the

individual, we use the term

ambidextrous

to describe the capability of individuals to

perform contradictory activities and switch

between different mindsets and action

sets (e.g., switching from unconstrained

creativity to scrutinizing the usefulness of

ideas). For innovation to succeed, these

general capabilities need to be based on

domain-relevant expertise.

In keeping with the terminology derived

from the organizational level, we propose

that ambidexterity at the individual level

refers to an individual’s ability to perform

explorative and exploitative activities and

integrate both kinds of activities toward suc-

cessful innovation through self-regulation.

Ambidexterity is not another psychologi-

cal trait. Rather, it refers to the regulated

coexistence of characteristics that may seem

incompatible from a dichotomous perspec-

tive but that hold a functional value for

innovation. Examples of such dichotomies

include attention to detail and innovative-

ness (Miron et al., 2004), prevention and

promotion focus (Forster et al., 2003; Hig-

gins 1997), and Conscientiousness and

Openness to Experience (George & Zhou,

2001) as well as systematic versus intu-

itive problem-solving style (Scott & Bruce,

1994). Rather than overemphasizing any

one of these characteristics, we propose

that the contradictory qualities need to be

regulated to successfully innovate.

Because seemingly contradictory quali-

ties such as attention to detail and inno-

vativeness are distinct empirical dimen-

sions rather than opposite poles of one

continuum, there are individuals who are

high on both dimensions. Miron et al.

(2004) found 7.4% of the engineers and

technicians of a large sample of R&D

employees to meet the criteria of high

attention to detail and high creativity break-

through. Thus, individual ambidexterity in

this area appears to be a rare phenomenon.

However, just looking at individual dif-

ferences in stable characteristics obscures

that the cognitive and behavioral complex-

ity described by ambidexterity can also

appear over time. Individuals can switch

between different mind and action sets in

accordance with situational demands. For

instance, individuals can carefully elaborate

and weigh advantages and disadvantages

of different courses of action, and once a

decision is made, switch to a mode of infor-

mation processing that is focused on act-

ing to achieve a speciﬁc goal (Gollwitzer,

Heckhausen, & Steller, 1990).

Research has demonstrated that man-

agers of product-development teams were

able to switch their management style from

an emergent style in uncertain periods that

required exploration to a planned style in

more certain periods that required imple-

mentation, and that teams led by managers

with ﬂuctuating styles were more innova-

tive than others (Lewis et al., 2002). Fur-

thermore, individuals who were asked to

generate original words and also keep the

error rate low managed to do so by divid-

ing their work into two sequential periods,

ﬁrst, generating original words and then

checking for errors (Livne-Tarandach, Erez,

& Erev, 2004).

Action theory (Frese & Zapf, 1994) pro-

vides concepts helpful to understanding

how conﬂicting demands are self-regulated

and how individuals switch between dif-

ferent modes of acting. In particular, the

idea of opportunistic action regulation cap-

tures the integration of different modes of

action (Hacker, 2003; Visser, 1994). From

an action theory point of view, regulating

actions that bring about innovation dif-

fer from regulating repetitive actions. The

latter follows a hierarchical-sequential, top-

down pattern. Consciously accessible goals

Dialectic perspective on innovation

323

Table 2.

Ambidexterity: The Regulation of Explorative and Exploitative Action at Multiple Organizational Levels

Separation Integration by active management Integration by self-regulation

Organization

Specialization of an organization either

on exploration or on exploitation

Providing leadership that embraces

competing values and practices

Intraorganizational market of ideas and

emergence of innovation champions

Separating explorative units from

exploitative units (e.g., research and

development) with distinct cultures,

incentive systems, and leadership styles

Time-based separation into phases of

exploration and exploitation according

to the punctuated equilibrium model

Supporting creativity and initiative in all

sections and on all hierarchical levels of

an organization Transformational

leadership at the top echelon of the

organization Providing resources for

innovation to all rather than just to

specialized departments

Integration of conﬂicting activities in the

top management team through dialectic

processes of power and negotiation

Team

Segmentation of the innovation process

into stages of idea generation,

evaluation, selection, and

implementation

Reducing task and

sequential interdependence in a team

Selecting people into a team with diverse

knowledge, skills, and abilities to

increase diversity

Creating ﬁxed and specialized roles

in a team

Engaging in complementary leadership

behaviors such as structuring activity,

control, and empowering employees to

explore autonomously

A transformational leader who provides a

common vision for a team that integrates

diversity

Adapting to situational task demands and

switching between leadership activities

Providing external help to switch between

mindsets and activities

Encouraging internal and external

communication and facilitating skunk

teams

Breadth of cognitive and behavioral

complexity of team members and

development of transactive memory

systems and team reﬂexitivity

Emergence of shared leadership and team

roles according to capabilities and task

demands

Political processes of selling new ideas and

negotiating for resources

Minority dissent as a regulating process in

teams

Development of skunk teams in addition to

formal teams

324

R. Bledow et al.

Table 2.

Continued

Separation Integration by active management Integration by self-regulation

Individual

Distributing tasks according to individual

knowledge, skills, and abilities relevant

for idea generation, idea

implementation, attention to detail

Acknowledging the nature of the creative

process (e.g., incubation,

unpredictability) in setting deadlines and

providing feedback

Breadth of behavioral repertoire and the

ﬂexibility to act according to situational

demands

Individual reﬂexivity and metacognition

about different mindsets and activities

Development of idiosyncratic strategies to

deal with conﬂicting demands

Effort and emotion regulation to deal with

different task demands

Self-starting, proactive actions to improve

external circumstances

Setting goals and providing rewards for

creativity

Empowering all employees to perform

exploratory activities to some extent

Assigning individual rather than team

accountability

Restraining from providing controlling

rewards that impede creativity

Separating individual from highly

interactive performance episodes to

enable divergent processes

Adapting leadership to strength and

weaknesses of individual employees

Allowing time for individual projects that

are not regulated by management

Questioning false beliefs about allegedly

mutually exclusive activities

Dialectic perspective on innovation

325

represent future states that the acting

person attempts to achieve. Goals are

decomposed into subgoals, which are

achieved sequentially. In contrast, the goal

of innovative acting is not clearly deﬁned in

detail before action. The goal coevolves

and changes as action proceeds. Hacker

(2003) suggested calling this

opportunistic

action regulation

, which is characterized by

systematic episodes interspersed by more

chaotic episodes triggered by unforeseen

opportunities that change the course of

action. To meet the demands of innovation,

both modes of action regulation are

necessary, and the challenge is to switch

between and integrate both modes. We

argue here that this captures quite well

the idea of two fundamentally different

capabilities that need to be integrated.

A factor that is supportive of both

successfully performing exploratory and

exploitative activities is domain-relevant

expertise, both in terms of breadth and

depth of expertise. In a study on innova-

tion and performance in the comic book

industry, Taylor and Greve (2006) found

‘‘the role of expertise in jointly spurring

creativity and raising average performance

is so strong that it overwhelms the theorized

tradeoff between exploration and exploita-

tion’’ (p. 734). A similar positive effect on

both successfully exploring and exploiting

was also found for past innovation success.

Thus, gaining profound and diverse domain

expertise enables individuals to become

ambidextrous in meeting both exploratory

and exploitative task demands.

Ambidexterity at the team level

Proposition 13. Ambidextrous teams

are composed of team members with the

requisite variety of characteristics (e.g.,

cognitive style, expertise) for a given task

and are able to integrate performance

episodes in which individual team members

work alone with performance episodes in

which team members work together.

Innovation often emerges from individ-

uals working in team settings. The central

feature of ambidextrous teams is that they

are able to maintain and capitalize on the

variability of what individuals bring to a

team in terms of ideas, expertise, and indi-

vidual differences, while at the same time

integrating this variability toward common

goals. Our conception of ambidexterity at

the team level can be related to team com-

position, the dichotomy of individual and

teamwork, contextual ambidexterity, and

ambidextrous leadership.

Not only do team members bring vari-

ability to a team in terms of different

ideas and expertise, there is also vari-

ability among team members in terms of

personality and cognitive styles. Ambidex-

terity can be achieved by composing a

team of members that bring the different

qualities rarely combined within one per-

son. For instance, Miron-Spector, Erez, and

Naveh (2006) found that the most innova-

tive teams were composed of a majority of

highly creative people, a moderate number

of conformists (who knew how to ﬁt the

product to the context), and a small num-

ber of members who were highly attentive

to detail; teams with this composition were

more innovative than homogenous teams

composed of only creative people. Such

a mix ensures that different task demands

of idea generation and implementation

are met. West and Anderson (1996) have

demonstrated that the proportion of highly

innovative team members has an impact

on the radicalness of innovation gener-

ated by the team. Furthermore, newcomers

increase heterogeneity of teams and affect

innovativeness (Perretti & Negro, 2006).

We expect team diversity to be particu-

larly effective if team members value this

diversity (Homan, van Knippenberg, Van

Kleef, & De Dreu, 2007) and understand

the functional and dysfunctional conse-

quences that different cognitive styles can

have. For instance, Kearney, Gebert, and

Voelpel (2009) found that teams composed

of team members high in need for cognition

were better able to integrate diversity with

respect to age and educational specializa-

tion to achieve superior performance.

Team members tend to share their com-

mon rather than their unique knowledge

and can overlook their diverse, unique

326

R. Bledow et al.

capabilities (Stasser, Vaughan, & Stewart,

2000). To overcome this tendency, Arbel

and Erez (2008) developed a methodology

that assesses the team members’ diverse

cognitive style, provides individual feed-

back to the team members, and asks them

to share their strengths with each other

and use them as needed while they design

an innovative product. Teams that used

this methodology designed more innova-

tive products than teams that did not

share their unique task-related character-

istics with each other. Thus, by carefully

composing teams in accordance with the

desired innovativeness of the outcome and

actively managing team diversity in terms of

expertise and cognitive style, the likelihood

of team success can be improved.

Many arguments can be made for

teamwork, for example, the magnitude

of a task may make it impossible for a

single individual to perform it successfully.

Furthermore, teams can counterbalance

characteristics that rarely occur within one

person. However, it is clear that teamwork

is not always more effective than individual

task performance. Not only do we know

about process loss in teams (Steiner, 1972)

and production blocking in brainstorming

groups (Diehl & Stroebe, 1991), there

is evidence that individual creators can

outperform teams at integrating the depths

and breadth of their expertise toward new

syntheses (Taylor & Greve, 2006). Based

on this evidence, it can be advisable to

assign parts of a project to individuals.

For teamwork, we hypothesize a temporal

separation strategy to be more effective than

constant collaborative work in teams. That

is, interspersing performance episodes in

which team members work closely together

with individual performance episodes in

which individuals can develop and pursue

ideas independently, unconstrained from

the activities and inﬂuence of other team

members.

Individual self-regulation in terms of

switching between different activities over

time and team self-regulation in terms of

changing leadership roles based on team

members’ strengths and weaknesses require

an environment that supports and allows

for self-regulation. An important environ-

mental characteristic that allows for good

self-regulation at work is freedom or auton-

omy, which has been shown to be related

to innovation behavior (Amabile, Conti,

Coon, Lazenby, & Herron, 1996). Gibson

and Birkinshaw (2004) use the term

contex-

tual ambidexterity

to describe an environ-

ment that allows individuals to decide for

themselves when to closely align their activ-

ities with the standards and routines of an

organization and when to depart and cre-

ate value through innovative behavior. We

concur with the idea of contextual ambidex-

terity, as the dynamics and unpredictability

of the innovation process make it difﬁcult

for leaders to constantly specify instruc-

tions about when to focus on what kind of

activity (Raisch & Birkinshaw, 2008). The

necessity to shape an environment support-

ive of exploration and exploitation points

to the importance of leadership for innova-

tion (Mumford et al., 2002).

Proposition 14. Ambidextrous leaders

are characterized by cognitive as well as

behavioral complexity and are able to

dynamically adapt their tactics (such as

being directive or providing autonomy)

to contextual demands. We propose that

transformational leadership is supportive of

both exploratory and exploitative activity

of followers and their integration and is

thus a central component of ambidextrous

leadership.

We extend the concept of ambidexter-

ity to leadership and deﬁne ambidextrous

leadership as the ability of leaders to man-

age tensions between variety creation and

variety reduction toward successful inno-

vation. On a general level, we character-

ize ambidextrous leadership as the ability

of leaders to perform a broad range of

seemingly conﬂicting behaviors (Denison,

Hooijberg & Quinn, 1995) that are support-

ive of both explorative idea generation and

exploitative idea implementation among

their employees. Furthermore, leaders need

to adapt these different behaviors accord-

ing to contextual demands, the progress of

the project, and the needs of individual

Dialectic perspective on innovation

327

employees. Effective ambidextrous leader-

ship thus demands cognitive, emotional,

and behavioral complexity and ﬂexibil-

ity (Buijs, 2007; Denison et al., 1995; Mum-

ford et al., 2002).

In a meta-analysis on leadership and

innovation, Hulsheger, Anderson, and Sal-

gado (2009b) found that all investigated

leadership styles—supportive leadership,

initiating structure, leader–member ex-

change, participative leadership, and trans-

formational leadership—displayed sub-

stantial, positive mean corrected correla-

tions with innovation. The fact that very

different leadership behaviors are related to

innovation supports the assertion that dif-

ferent or even contradictory leader behav-

iors hold functional value for innovation.

The familiar argument that there are differ-

ent pathways to innovation again emerges.

Although the relative contribution of dif-

ferent leadership styles depends on contin-

gency conditions, such as the research or

development focus of a department (Keller,

2006), we stress that one needs to take

different, seemingly contradictory leader-

ship behaviors into account simultaneously,

rather than focusing on the impact of single

leadership constructs.

A particularly important tension exists

around the degree of structuring and con-

trolling activities by the leaders versus the

degree of autonomy provided for employ-

ees (increasing their chances to explore). A

controlling leadership tactic, for example,

close monitoring, may help avoid inefﬁ-

ciencies to ensure the alignment of fol-

lowers’ activities. However, several studies

have reported detrimental effects of control-

ling leadership on creativity (Stahl & Koser,

1978; Zhou, 2003). In contrast, the lead-

ership tactic of providing autonomy and

situational control may also ‘‘run into trou-

ble.’’ Gebert, Boerner, and Lanwehr (2003)

found support for a curvilinear relation-

ship between autonomy and innovation

with moderate levels of autonomy being

optimal for innovativeness of organizations.

Alternatively, we derive from our dialectic

perspective that the simultaneous presence

of integrative mechanisms, such as a shared

vision, can help align the activities of dif-

ferent employees and buffer negative effects

of high autonomy. How different leadership

tactics and combinations of leadership tac-

tics relate to success needs to be researched

in more detail.

If innovation is marked by periods of

stability and clarity and by bursts of cre-

ativity and ambiguity, then a key issue is

how managers respond to such ﬂuctuations.

They increase their structuring activities if

required and focus on providing auton-

omy and intellectual stimulation if creation

and exploration are central to the project.

However, there is only limited empiri-

cal research about the necessary dynamics

of leadership for innovation. Lewis et al.

(2002) investigated different project man-

agement styles, which she categorized as

either emergent or planned, and found evi-

dence that different aggregates of action

are required at different times. However,

all project management activities decreased

over time, and her results do not support the

idea that more managerial control is sup-

portive in later implementation stages of a

project, as may be inferred from a stage

model of innovation.

We propose transformational leadership

to serve an important role in managing con-

ﬂicting demands between variability cre-

ation and integration of variability as it is

supportive of different activities required

for innovation. Providing intellectual stim-

ulation and individual consideration stim-

ulate followers’ creativity and explorative

activity. At the same time, transformational

leaders provide direction by formulating a

vision and inspirationally motivating their

followers, resulting in greater alignment

of their followers’ activities (Kearney &

Gebert, 2009). Recent empirical studies

conﬁrm that transformational leadership is

not only correlated with innovation suc-

cess but also interacts with diversity, which

support the hypothesis that transformational

leaders can capitalize on the potential of

diversity for innovation (Jansen, George,

Van den Bosch, & Volberda, 2008; Kear-

ney & Gebert, 2009; Shin & Zhou, 2007).

However, as with our concern regarding

328

R. Bledow et al.

unambiguously positive consequences of a

shared vision, followers of transformational

leaders may be inﬂuenced by the leader

to such an extent that it becomes dysfunc-

tional for innovation because they do not

develop ideas outside of the realm of the

charismatically communicated vision.

Ambidextrous organizations

Proposition 15. Ambidextrous organi-

zations can not only be achieved through

separating explorative from exploitative

activities and integrating activities at the

level of the top management team but

also by creating organizational values and

practices that enable the management of

conﬂicting demands within one system.

Ambidextrous organizations, as deﬁned

by O’Reilly and Tushman (2004), solve the

conﬂict and trade offs between improving

and exploiting existing products and devel-

oping new, potentially disruptive products

by structurally separating explorative from

exploitative business units. If organizations

pursue a strategy that separates explorative

activities from exploitative activities, they

need to implement different practices, such

as reward systems and criteria for per-

sonnel selection, and foster different cul-

tures that are consistent with the respective

units’ goals. In this organizational design

model, it is the responsibility of the top

management team to integrate and bal-

ance conﬂicting activities (O’Reilly & Tush-

man, 2004).

Although the empirical evidence is still

scarce, it supports the central assertion

of ambidexterity that organizations per-

form at a superior level if they both

explore and exploit (e.g., Katila & Ahuja,

2002). He and Wong (2004) found a posi-

tive interaction of exploration and exploita-

tion, such that companies that balanced

and engaged in both activities simulta-

neously performed best in terms of sales

performance. On closer examination, how-

ever, the ﬁndings by He and Wong pose

fundamental problems for a dichotomous

theory perspective and its one-sided focus

on the conﬂict between exploration and

exploitation. He and Wong found that an

exploitative strategy not only predicted sales

performance via the mediator of process

innovation intensity, an exploitative strat-

egy positively and incrementally predicted

product innovation intensity together with

the presence of an explorative strategy

(both strategies are independent dimen-

sions). This supports the argument based on

our dialectic perspective that exploitative

activities can lead to product innovation.

In contrast to evidence that both explo-

ration and exploitation are required for

sustainable performance, the ambidextrous

organizational design proposition of high

degrees of structural separation of explo-

rative from exploitative activities is sup-

ported to our knowledge by case studies

only. For instance, O’Reilly and Tush-

man (2004) describe how creating struc-

turally separated business units has enabled

Ciba Vison (now Novartis) to successfully

develop fundamentally new products and

manufacturing processes in the area of

contact lenses and related products. In con-

trast, Westerman et al. (2006) report how

Walgreens successfully used a more inte-

grated approach in developing and imple-

menting its online business, capitalizing on

synergies with the exploitative activities of

its stores. Westerman et al. noted that struc-

tural separation of explorative business units

can have advantages at the beginning of an

innovation life cycle, whereas it creates dif-

ﬁculties at later stages of an innovation life

cycle. Given its prominence in the current

literature, we think it is remarkable that the

recommendation to strongly separate explo-

rative from exploitative business units has

not been clearly supported by empirical evi-

dence. Contingency models specifying the

conditions under which structural separa-

tion is advisable and recommended degrees

of separation are not available.

In contrast to the hypothesis on struc-

tural separation, the need for integration of

different activities in the top management

team has been empirically supported by

different groups of researchers. Top man-

agement teams need to see ‘‘the unity and

conﬂict of opposites’’ (Engels, 1940), and

transformational leadership can support this

Dialectic perspective on innovation

329

process (Jansen et al., 2008; Lubatkin, Sim-

sek, Yan, & Veiga, 2006).

In one sense, O’Reilly and Tushman’s

(2004) proposition of an ambidextrous orga-

nization also is to a certain extent dialectic,

as they emphasize the need for simultane-

ous presence of explorative and exploitative

activities in an organization, although they

emphasize separation (at lower levels of

an organization) and integration (in the

top management) of these activities. An

approach that is even more dichotomous

suggests that organizations can only focus

on either exploration or exploitation at any

given point in time (Abernathy & Utterback,

1978). Even from our dialectic approach,

an argument can be made to create new

business units, potentially with newly hired

employees, that are unconstrained by more

exploitative activities of the organization:

As we stated, innovation cannot be com-

pletely ‘‘free’’ from what existed previously,

and new business units with newly hired

employees will be more likely to develop

innovations that are not related to what the

organization has been producing. The ques-

tion is to what extent this is desirable, given

the problems we have outlined with struc-

tural separation, such as producing these

innovations in the established exploitative

business units, loss of synergies, and limited

resources. Setting up new business units is

likely to come at the expense of explorative

activities within the system of an organiza-

tion. Given the lack of empirical evidence

and our theoretical propositions, we assert

that the traditional notion of the ambidex-

trous organizations is not the only or even

the one best strategy to meet conﬂicting

demands.

The less an organization has structurally

separated its differing activities, the more

conﬂicting demands are imposed on sub-

units of the organization and the more

important it is that these subunits them-

selves become ambidextrous. However,

given that exploration and exploitation is an

abstract dichotomy, we expect exploration

and exploitation to always be necessary at

every level and in every unit of the organi-

zation. Although the relative importance of

each activity can vary, values and practices

that support and integrate both activities are

necessary throughout the organization.

Where organizational values and prac-

tices that support either exploration or

exploitation are in conﬂict, a strategy of

balancing competing values and practices is

necessary. However, we believe that, more

often than not, different cultural values and

practices are not incompatible. Miron et al.

(2004) and Naveh and Erez (2004) found

cultural values for innovation, quality, and

efﬁciency to be distinct but not necessar-

ily incompatible. Organizations that ﬁnd

ways to integrate cultural values and prac-

tices that we generally conceive of as

being important but incompatible will be

most successful. The study by Gilson et al.

(2005), which we have already mentioned,

shows that creativity and standardization

are not necessarily incompatible but can

be complementary. Adler, Goldoftas, and

Levine (1999) provide a case study con-

cerning a Toyota subsidiary that succeeded

in overcoming trade offs between ﬂexibility

and efﬁciency by developing new organi-

zational mechanisms, such as metaroutines

(routines for changing other routines) and

the temporal separation of routine and non-

routine tasks. Concerning organizational

practices of knowledge ﬂows across hier-

archical levels, Mom, Van Den Bosch, and

Volberda (2007) have shown that the direc-

tion of knowledge ﬂow is differentially

related to explorative and exploitative activ-

ities by managers. A predominance of top-

down knowledge ﬂow is related to a focus

on exploitative activities, whereas hierar-

chically bottom-up and horizontal knowl-

edge ﬂows facilitate managers’ exploratory

activities. We infer that knowledge ﬂows

need to be in a balance that is contingent

on the strategic focus of a business unit.

Error management culture is an example

of a cultural approach for dealing with

the dialectics of errors as having positive

and negative consequences for innova-

tion (Frese et al., 2009; van Dyck, Frese,

Baer, & Sonnentag, 2005). Although aim-

ing at avoiding negative consequences of

errors and the reoccurrence of errors, error

330

R. Bledow et al.

management culture aims at simultaneously

capitalizing on positive consequences of

errors. A cultural characteristic of organiza-

tions that can serve both exploratory and

exploitative goals is climate for initiative,

describing an active approach toward work

throughout an organization. Individual ini-

tiatives can create variability and be the

origin of innovation that unfolds upward

across organizational levels. At the same

time, climate for initiative has been found

to facilitate the implementation of process

innovation because an active work culture

ensures that employees self start to deal with

unforeseen problems during the implemen-

tation of innovation (Baer & Frese, 2003).

A Dialectic Perspective on the

Science and Practice of

Innovation Management

Our conceptual approach that contrasts

dichotomous and dialectic thinking also

applies to the science–practice relation

in innovation management. Research on

innovation and practical efforts to pro-

mote and manage innovation in organiza-

tions are separate activities geared toward

different goals. Whereas science explores

the unknowns of innovation, practice aims

at exploiting knowledge for innovation

endeavors to succeed. Both activities face

different demands, for instance, in the

dichotomy of rigor being a primary demand

for science and relevance being a primary

demand for practice. There are good rea-

sons why both activities—the science of

innovation and the practice of innova-

tion management—need to be separated.

A ‘‘natural distance’’ between pure sci-

ence and day-to-day practices is a positive

and healthy feature of any science-based

professional discipline. For instance, the

science of innovation needs extensive time-

frames to produce generalizable ﬁndings,

whereas innovation management addresses

unique challenges of speciﬁc organizations

that need to be met in real (and usually

short) time. However, the separation of

science and practice has led to scientiﬁc

ﬁndings with little impact on organizational

practices of innovation and to organiza-

tional practices that lack empirical evidence

and, we suspect, that often may appear

effective rather than actually being effec-

tive. Therefore, as important as some degree

of separation between science and practice

of innovation may be, also important are

integration and exchange.

Despite the growing attention to sci-

ence–practice relations in industrial –

organizational (I–O) psychology in gen-

eral, there is little discussion speciﬁcally

related to creativity and innovation. Rather,

research into innovation, and especially

studies into individual creativity, seems to

have continued unabated and in splendid

isolation from any imperative to demon-

strate applicability to the real-world con-

cerns of personnel practitioners and line

managers concerned with stimulating and

harnessing innovation at different levels

of analysis (West, 2002b). Rather ironi-

cally, innovation research has demonstrated

all the ontologically deleterious hallmarks

of ‘‘excessive conformity’’: ‘‘Continu[ing]

to routinely investigate old chestnut phe-

nomena using conventional methods and

designs, at times ... actively dissuaded

from pursuing an innovative agenda or from

trialing untested methods and approaches’’

(Anderson, 1998, p. 323).

The ﬁeld of I–O psychology has paid

scarce attention to developing practical

tools, transferring tools from basic psychol-

ogy to organizational practice, and evaluat-

ing tools used in practice. There has been

little transfer from science to practice in

the sense of what Highhouse (2008) terms

‘‘decision aids’’ based on robust scientiﬁc

ﬁndings into pragmatic products and pro-

cesses to assist practitioners in their tasks.

This is remarkable and distressing as I–O

psychology is arguably the psychological

discipline that should provide such appli-

cations. Even more so with regard to our

focal topics, the consultancy marketplace

for tools supporting creativity and innova-

tion interventions in the workplace appears

to be notably preformative, in that such

tools are apparently not based on solid

research ﬁndings but exhibit elements of

Dialectic perspective on innovation

331

being invidiously popularist in appealing

to the whims and wish lists of practition-

ers desiring quick-ﬁx solutions toward the

ill-informed maximization of innovation in

organizations (see also King, 1992; West,

2001). Even in the area of testing for cre-

ativity and innovation potential in selection

situations, several popular tests have been

challenged over their questionable psycho-

metric properties (e.g., Anderson & Sleap,

2004; Patterson, 2002).

At the individual level, methods should

be developed to allow individuals to switch

between divergent and convergent think-

ing modes. At the team level, methods

should be developed for optimizing team

composition, such that it is most sup-

portive of innovation. In addition, meth-

ods for improving team processes, such

as assuring team psychological safety and

enabling team reﬂexivity, should be fur-

ther developed and implemented. At the

organizational level, implementing organi-

zational practices that are in support of both

exploration and exploitation is necessary,

enabling the coexistence of innovation,

quality, and efﬁciency.

As important as the development of sci-

entiﬁcally based products of innovation

management is, an overreliance and unrea-

soned application of any speciﬁc practice or

method, even if it is evidence-based, stands

in contrast to our dialectic approach: The

pathways and processes leading to inno-

vation are manifold and different contexts

call for different solutions. A practice that is

right at one point in time can become mal-

adaptive as an innovation project unfolds

or environmental contingency conditions

change. Providing employees with time

to pursue projects that grow out of their

personal interests can stimulate variability

generation and innovation, as Google has

demonstrated (Mayer, 2006). However, if

cost competition and streamlining of a busi-

ness becomes more important, companies

need to change their once highly success-

ful practices toward greater convergence of

employees’ activities. Thus, an understand-

ing of the dialectic processes underlying

innovation and the ability to read contextual

demands is at the heart of successful inno-

vation management and provides the basis

for an appropriate application of speciﬁc

methods.

The challenge for a science of organi-

zational innovation is to develop dynamic

contingency models of innovation manage-

ment that inform practice on when different

practices are recommendable. We concur

with Locke (2004) that science should pro-

duce action principles to guide practice. For

instance, brainstorming in teams is a widely

adopted practice, but creativity researchers

question its effectiveness (Diehl & Stroebe,

1991). Because of production blocking,

individuals in teams actually produce fewer

ideas than they would if each team mem-

ber generated ideas individually. Does that

imply that brainstorming is in general not

advisable? We do not think so. If a lim-

ited set of convergent ideas is sufﬁcient,

or if there needs to be high agreement

among the team members to act, traditional

brainstorming can be a pragmatic solu-

tion (Sutton & Hargadon, 1996). However,

if the goal of a team is to develop as many

divergent ideas as possible, nominal brain-

storming in which individuals ﬁrst generate

ideas individually is advisable, a process

that can be extended by going through

iterative cycles between individual idea

generation and idea integration in teams.

Our point is that personnel practitioners

and line managers do not only need a

ﬁxed set of scientiﬁcally based products for

managing innovation. Understanding the

fundamental psychological and social prin-

ciples involved in innovation and the ability

to adapt methods to contextual demands is

at least as important.

Action principles of innovation manage-

ment.

Principles of action have been

suggested to follow from theory to make

the theory practice oriented (Locke, 2004).

Although we are aware that our dialectic

perspective is in no way a formalized the-

ory to produce tightly argued principles,

we would like to suggest a few principles

that follow from our thinking about innova-

tion. We propose that these principles apply

332

R. Bledow et al.

at the individual, team, and organizational

level, and we use the term

system

to refer

to a unit at all three levels:

•

Principle of conﬂicting demands:

Bringing about innovation poses con-

ﬂicting demands on systems. To meet

the demands of innovation, systems

need to value and perform a variety of

different and partially conﬂicting activ-

ities (e.g., creative idea generation and

focused innovation implementation;

exploration and exploitation).

•

Principle of antithesis:

Whenever a

system moves to the extremes of

one activity of a dichotomy, such

as exploration–exploitation, over a

longer period of time, an antithesis will

occur requiring the system to change

its course of action, incorporating the

activity it has neglected (e.g., a strong

focus on developing new products and

reinventing processes will result in an

antithetical call for stability).

•

Principle of integrating variability:

The

more variability there is on a lower

level of a system, the more impor-

tant integrative mechanisms at a higher

level become (e.g., variability: amount

of new ideas, diversity of people, busi-

ness units with different cultures and

purposes; integration: shared vision in

a team, a transformational leader).

•

Principle of overcoming dichotomous

thinking:

Activities regarded as contra-

dictory, paradoxical, or in conﬂict can

often be reconciled within a dialec-

tic approach toward innovation. Sys-

tems may beneﬁt by moving from

‘‘either/or’’ thinking and acting with

a ‘‘both/and’’ approach (e.g., encour-

aging explorative activity in predom-

inantly exploitative organizations and

organizational units).

•

Principle of separation:

Although we

have been critical of the strong empha-

sis on separating explorative and

exploitative activities in the current

ambidexterity literature, this is a pos-

sible pathway to innovation as several

case studies have demonstrated (e.g.,

launching explorative business units

unconstrained by the current way of

doing things). We suggest if this path-

way is taken, good mechanisms need

to be in place to bring the separated

activities together again, not only on

the level of top management but also

for the involved subsystems.

•

Principle of actively managing dialec-

tic tensions:

If a system has the

internal complexity to manage con-

ﬂicting activities, it can capitalize on

the interdependencies of conﬂicting

activities other systems need to sep-

arate (e.g., a company vision that

encompasses both creative experi-

mentation and standardization of core

processes).

•

Principle of proactivity:

A proactive

orientation of a system facilitates the

learning processes required to meet

the conﬂicting demands of innovation

(e.g., a system that is proactive

in realizing changing demands and

then self-starts in switching between

different activities).

•

Principle of dialogue between research

and practice:

A dialogue between

researchers in academia and prac-

titioners may lead to the discovery

of new practical implementations to

existing solutions. Furthermore, it may

stimulate new theoretical develop-

ments and new solutions to practical

problems.

Limitations to our approach and direc-

tions for relevant future research.

We have

emphasized that the propositions and action

principles we have put forward cannot be

considered examples of evidenced-based

management (Rousseau, 2006); rather, we

have derived these primarily from con-

ceptual developments by organizational

theorists, our own dialectic perspective,

and from available empirical evidence

to the best of our current knowledge.

All the propositions, action principles, and

the strategies of dealing with conﬂicting

demands (Table 2) require speciﬁcation and

Dialectic perspective on innovation

333

additional research at all level from the indi-

vidual through the team level and up to the

organizational level.

From our proposition that multiple path-

ways can lead to idea generation and

implementation, it should not be inferred

that ‘‘everything and anything goes.’’ Quite

to the contrary, innovation is a high-

risk endeavor that often fails. Thus, future

research needs to point out how systems

can meet conﬂicting demands of innova-

tion to remain adaptive in the long term.

The most important research questions that

follow from our reasoning are What are the

cognitive, behavioral, cultural, and struc-

tural antecedents of ambidexterity? What

are optimal levels of separation of con-

ﬂicting activities at different organizational

levels that sufﬁciently reduce tensions while

not compromising their interdependence?

What are the boundary conditions for the

effectiveness of different strategies in deal-

ing with conﬂicting demands of innovation?

Finally, allowing for a two-way communi-

cation between academia and industry will

facilitate the validation of existing theories

of innovation, leading to new theoretical

developments and practical implementa-

tion. We emphasize this endeavor should

be based on Lewin’s (1951) proposition that

‘‘there is nothing as practical as a good

theory’’ (p. 169).

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Theresa Obuobisa-Darko

Using the social exchange theory, the paper explains why Entrepreneurial leadership influences employee engagement and employee's innovative behaviour towards organisation success. Findings indicate that entrepreneurial leaders influence employee engagement and employee innovative behaviour because of their People, Learning and Purpose oriented mindset. These enable the leader to influence employees positively and the employees reciprocate by being engaged, thus strive to achieve goals, work with vigour, dedication and absorbed and exhibit innovative behaviour by generating new ideas, promote and implement them for organisation success. The chapter makes a novel theoretical contribution by utilizing social exchange theory to explain the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership, employee engagement and employee's innovative behaviour. A model is developed to guide future empirical studies.

The impact of diversity communication on employee organizational identification and employee voice behaviors: A moderated mediation model

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Nov 2024
PUBLIC RELAT REV

When Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness Are Related to Creative Behavior: An Interactional Approach

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Full-text available

Jun 2001

This study adopted an interactional approach to understanding how 2 of the Five-Factor traits, openness to experience and conscientiousness, are related to creative behavior in the workplace. Openness to experience is theorized to result in high levels of creative behavior and conscientiousness is theorized to result in low levels of creative behavior when the situation allows for the manifestation of the trait influences. More specifically, the authors hypothesized that openness to experience would result in high levels of creative behavior if feedback valence were positive and job holders were presented with a heuristic task that allowed them to be creative. The authors also hypothesized that conscientiousness would result in low levels of creative behavior if supervisors engaged in close monitoring and coworkers were unsupportive. The authors tested their hypotheses in a sample of office workers, and 5 out of the 6 hypotheses were supported.

Incremental Effects of Reward on Creativity

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Full-text available

Oct 2001

Robert Eisenberger

A Dialectic Perspective on Innovation: Conflicting Demands, Multiple Pathways, and Ambidexterity

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