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INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT, NIRMA UNIVERSITY
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Ambidexterity Among Frontline Employees:
Antecedents and
Orchestration for Future Research
Mohammed Atif Aman
Research Scholar
D/O Business Administration
Faculty of Management Studies and Research
Aligarh Muslim University
Aligarh - 202002
maaman@myamu.ac.in
Prof. Mohammed Khalid Azam
Ex. Dean and Chairman
D/O Business Administration
Faculty of Management Studies and Research
Aligarh Muslim University
Aligarh - 202002
mkhalidazam@rediffmail.com
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Ambidexterity Among Frontline Employees:
Antecedents and
Orchestration for Future Research
ABSTRACT
In anticipation to meet the ever-increasing demands of their
organizations and to excel in a competitive environment, the
frontline employees have developed a sense of
ambidexterity. Extant sales and marketing literature
manifests ambidexterity among frontline employees as the
synchronous pursuit two conflicting goals of exploiting
current competencies and exploration of new opportunities.
Simultaneous achieving both service and sales targets,
retention and acquisition of customers, selling of new and
existing products, achieving efficiency with flexibility
depicts few dimensions of frontline ambidexterity. In this
vein, organizations are focused to capitalize on the tendency
of their frontline employees to act ambidextrously and
propelling them to achieve two conflicting goals, sometimes,
regardless of their formal position or title. The Purpose of
this review article is to carve-out individual level
ambidexterity into different themes based on various
dimensions of ambidexterity, find antecedents of individual-
level ambidexterity and to provide impressions for further
research. The novelty in the manuscript is the identification
of the new areas for research left uncovered. Implications or
findings (theoretical) of the paper include the need to: study
the impact of ambidexterity on work-life balance of
employee, understand whether ambidexterity is innate or
imposed, apprehend ambidexterity with both customer and
organization orientation and to analyze whether
ambidextrous employees are more likely to be promoted as
compared to single-oriented employees and study gender-
wise differences of ambidexterity.
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Keywords: Ambidexterity, Frontline Employees,
Exploration and exploitation
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Introduction
From its field of inception ‘innovations in the organizations’
(Duncan, 1976) to ‘organizational learning’ (March 1991)
ambidexterity has moved down the line to the lower levels in the
organization. The current focus of the academicians to apprehend
ambidexterity at frontline employee level because of the fact that
being ambidextrous, frontline employees can add more revenues
and enhance the satisfaction of the final customer easily without
incurring any new cost by their prowess in cross/up selling
(Jasmand, Blazevic, & de Ruyter, 2012); blending service and sales
at their level (Yu, Patterson, & de Ruyter, 2013; Patterson, Yu, &
Kimpakorn, 2014); acquiring new customers while retaining
existing ones (DeCarlo & Lam, 2016; Nijssen, Guenzi, & van der
Borgh, 2017); achieving efficiency and flexibility (Yu, Gudergan,
& Chen, 2018); simultaneous selling of new and old products (van
der Borgh, de Jong, & Nijssen, 2017; Van Der Borgh & Schepers,
2014). In order to capitalize on this potential, organization are now
obsessed to make their frontline employees ambidextrous by
motivating them to achieve conflicting goals regardless of their
formal position or title leading to a blend of selling and service,
selling of new and existing products, retaining (farming) and
acquiring (hunting) of customers, attaining efficiency and flexibility
concurrently.
Despite its vital importance in the organization, the understanding
of the subject is still in the dawning phase as there are a handful of
studies apprehending ambidexterity at the frontline employee level.
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Keeping in mind the importance of a clear understanding of various
dimension of ambidexterity this manuscript is aimed to provide a
brief summary of the studies undertaken assessing the ambidextrous
behavior of frontline employees and providing insights for further
researches. The paper is divided into three sections, firstly a brief
idea about the concepts and connotations regarding ambidexterity
both at the organizational and individual level is being provided.
The second section includes a brief summary of the studies
undertaken to study ambidexterity at the individual employee level.
Finally, directions for future researches are being provided.
Concepts and Connotations
‘Organizational ambidexterity’ refers to an organization’s ability to
combine various conflicting activities of exploiting existing
competencies and exploring new opportunities (Tushman &
O’Reilly, 1996; Raisch & Birkinshaw, 2008) which both
industrialists and researchers perceive as a mantra of success in a
prevailing environment. Coined by Duncan, the term ambidexterity
means the way of handling complications of alignment and
adaptability by creating dual structures within an organization to
manage innovation, whereby some units or groups focus on
adaptability while other groups or units focus alignment. Alignment
refers to coherence among different activities in a business unit that
are working together towards the same goal. Adaptability is referred
to as, the capacity to reconfigure activities in a business unit quickly
to meet the changing demands of the task environment (Duncan,
1976). Later March (1991) defined ambidexterity in organizational
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learning more precisely on the basis of exploitation and exploration,
the essence of exploitation is the refinement and extension of
existing competencies, technology, and paradigms whose results are
positive, predictable and proximate; is the creation of efficiency and
reliability, while the kernel for exploration is experimentation with
new alternatives for creating flexibility and creativity with distant
and uncertain and often negative results.
Initially the debate on the ambidexterity was on two streams of
thoughts: first, which of the two dimensions of ambidexterity i.e.
alignment and adaptability inhibit learning in itself and the type of
learning involved; second, do these dimensions are better to be
performed simultaneously or separately. Baum, Li, and Usher
(2000) Benner and Tushman (2002) and He and Wong (2004) came
up with fact that both exploitation and exploration are inclusive of
learning, albeit of different types (as cited in Gupta, Smith, &
Shalley, 2006). Baum, Li, and Usher (2000) suggested exploitation
refers to learning via local search experimental refinement, selection
and reuse of existing routines while exploration refers to learning
gained through processes of concerted variation, planned
experimentation and play. Benner and Tushman (2002) report
learning in terms of exploitative and exploratory innovation where
the prior includes learning through the same technological trajectory
and the latter exhibits learning through a shift to a different
technological trajectory.
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Stemming from the same lines He and Wong (2004) explained
learning in two dimensions on the basis of exploitative and
explorative innovations, where exploitative innovations connote
technological innovation activities aimed at improving existing
product-market domains and exploratory innovations reflect
technological innovations aimed at entering new products - market
domains. Gupta, Smith, and Shalley (2006) conclude with their
observation that both exploitation and exploration includes some
learning and it is more logical to differentiate between the type and
amount of learning rather than just focusing on presence or absence
of learning.
The other debate was regarding the simultaneous pursuit of the two
capabilities for that the arguments made by March (1991) are clear
and concrete that the two competencies are incompatible for
simultaneous pursuit as they compete for scarce resources and are
self-iterative which means exploitation leads to more exploitation
and exploration leads to more exploration and ending failure trap
due to iterations in exploitation and success trap due to iterations in
exploration, but when resources are not scarce then there is a room
for simultaneous pursuit of the two. Duncan (1976) the pioneer of
the theme sees the pursuit of the two capabilities by the creation of
dual structures within an organization to manage the trade-off
between alignment and adaptability, which scholars have described
as structural ambidexterity whereby some units or groups focus on
adaptability while other groups or units focus alignment
(Birkinshaw & Gibson, 2004).
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Similar to this approach sequential ambidexterity came into focus to
carry both of the two mutually exclusive competencies within a
business unit through various arrangements like task partitioning –
whereby one group adopts an “organic” structure while other takes
“mechanistic” structure. Temporal separation – a setting in which a
unit completely pursues a set a set of activity one day and totally
different activity another day (Alder, Goldoftas, & Levine, 1999).
Punctuated equilibrium – creating temporal cycling between long
periods of exploitation and short bursts of exploration, which is best
suited at the individual level or to a subsystem within an
organization where exploitation and exploration are considered as
two ends of a continuum (March 1991).
Birkinshaw and Gibson (2004) presented a different and enhanced
view on ambidexterity to simultaneously balancing seemingly
contradicting tensions of alignment and adaptability which they
defined as contextual ambidexterity. It is the ability of organizations
achieve to achieve alignment and adaptability at the individual level
by building a set of processes or systems that enable and encourage
individuals to make their own judgments about how to divide their
time between conflicting demands for alignment and adaptability.
Contextual ambidexterity is viewed as a meta-level capacity (for
alignment and adaptability) that permeates all functions and levels
in a unit encouraging individuals to make their own choices
regarding dividing their resources between alignment and
adaptability related issues.
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Ambidexterity at the individual level
Impressions of ambidexterity at the individual level were initially
precepted by Gibson and Birkinshaw (2004) in their proposition of
contextual ambidexterity “although ambidexterity is a
characteristic of a business unit as a whole, it manifests itself in the
specific actions of individuals throughout the organization”
(Gibson & Birkinshaw, 2004, p. 211). Raiesh et al. (2009) noted,
(as cited in Jasmand, Blazevic, & de Ruyter, 2012) a firm’s
ambidexterity is rooted in the employee’s ability to manage
disparate task demands and integrate them for cross-fertilization,
making it clear that organizational ambidexterity cannot be fully
comprehended until and unless understanding it at the individual
employee level.
Sales and marketing literature define ambidexterity as an
employee’s ability to achieve or accomplish seemingly conflict task
and goals simultaneously. Jasmand et al. (2012) state ambidexterity
as the ability of frontline employees to engage simultaneously in
behaviors that might otherwise be viewed as being in conflict with
one another. Ambidexterity has been viewed as an orientation that
motivates a set of customer service behaviors as well as a set of
cross/up-selling behaviors. Extant ambidexterity literature exhibits
different levels of organizational structures where ambidexterity is
observed and studied viz; organization level (Sarkees, Hulland, &
Prescott, 2010; Junni et al., 2013); managerial level (Van Der Borgh
& Schepers, 2014); individual employee level (Patterson et al.,
2014; Yu et al., 2013). Depicting different dimensions of
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ambidexterity. alignment-adaptability (Duncan, 1976);
exploitation-exploration (Kauppila & Tempelaar, 2016); efficiency-
flexibility (Yu et al., 2018); sales-service (Ruyter, Patterson, & Yu,
2010); hunting-farming (Nijssen et al.,2017; DeCarlo & Lam 2016);
sale of new-existing products (van der Borgh et al., 2017); service-
cross/up selling (Jasmand et al., 2012). Across various industries
viz; pharmaceuticals (Sok, Sok, & De Luca, 2016); ICT (van der
Borgh et al., 2017); service (Yu et al., 2018); retail (Van Der Borgh
& Schepers, 2014).
Antecedents of ambidexterity at the individual level
The antecedents of ambidexterity at individual employee levels can
be clubbed into two groups viz: internal and external antecedents.
Under the internal head, Intrinsic motivation (Kao & Chen, 2016) is
of paramount importance in leading towards ambidexterity because
an intrinsically motivated employee is more probable and suitable
to handle dual goals as compared to the extrinsically motivated
employee. Moreover, the antecedents found out by other researchers
like empowerment (Yu et al., 2013), self-efficacy (Patterson et al.,
2014), driven to work, enjoyment to work (Sok., et al 2015), risk-
taking, desire to win and positive outcome focus (DeCarlo & Lam,
2016) are linked with intrinsic motivation in some or other way. On
the other side team support, leadership, reward system (Yu et al.,
2013), organizational ambidextrous climate, relationship and
confidence with manager (Patterson et al., 2014; Yu et al., 2015),
manager orientation (van der Borgh et al., 2017), cross-functional
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cooperation (Nijssen et al., 2017) are the factors which externally
leads to ambidextrous behavior of employees.
Summary of the studies
This section is divided into four segments on the basis of studies
assessing ambidextrous behavior of frontline employees in; service-
sales, selling new and existing products, retention and acquisition of
customers, achieving efficiency and flexibility. The summary
includes the objectives, industry under which study is conducted,
sample size and the key findings of the study.
Service-sales ambidexterity
Ahearne, Jelinek, and Jones (2007) conducted exploratory
interviews and gathered data from 358 customers to examine the
effect of salesperson service behavior on customer satisfaction and
trust. The results indicate that salesperson service behavior plays a
key role in building satisfaction and trust among customers which
in turn increases the customer share of the market.
In their pioneering work on service-cross/up selling Jasmand et al.
(2012) advances ambidexterity at the individual level through an
online survey 119 customer service representatives at a global call
center. The results indicate a positive effect of the locomotion
orientation on customer service representatives (CSR) ambidextrous
behavior which is further enhanced with high assessment orientation
but under low levels of bounded discretion and team identification.
although service-sale ambidexterity is positively related to customer
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satisfaction and sales performance. However, ambidextrous
behavior also resulted in the loss of efficiency, which was offset by
customer satisfaction and sales performance as customer
satisfaction and cross-/up-selling result in positive long-term
benefits, via enhanced customer–firm relationships.
Yu et al. (2013) examined 2,306 frontline employees in 267 bank
branches of a retail bank to study the impact of contextual variables
on service-sales ambidexterity both quantitatively and qualitatively
from a multilevel perspective. Their results strongly evidence that at
organizational level, individual employee perceptions of
empowerment, team support, and leadership relate positively to
service-sales ambidexterity. Whereas, team support is significantly
associated with ambidexterity only at the individual employee level.
Moreover, proper alignment of reward systems with the demand of
ambidexterity positively impacts the relationship between
empowerment and ambidexterity.
Patterson et al. (2014) conducted a cross-sectional survey of 212
frontline employees in the service sector responsible for both service
and sales targets. The study shows the impacts of three constructs
namely: individual differences (self-efficacy), organizational
context (service-sale climate) and interpersonal elements (LMX
theory), on salespersons ambidextrous behavior. The results show
the importance of all the three constructs in explaining service-sale
performance: self-efficacy as the strongest driver of successful
ambidextrous performance, high-quality relationship encourages
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frontline employees to exert additional efforts be ambidextrous, the
impact of service – sale environment on ambidextrous performance
was less but significant.
In their another study regarding service-sale ambidexterity on
frontline employees of the banking sector, Yu et al. (2015)
examined 2306 from 267 bank branch to determine how motivation,
abilities of an FLE and confidence in operational manager effects
ambidexterity at both individual and organizational level. The
findings suggest that confidence in the operational manager
enhances the impact of FLEs’ learning orientations on service– sales
ambidexterity, especially due to the manager’s ability to lead by
examples. But when manager exhibits greater ability and takes over
the process the FLE’s confidence in his /her ability decreases.
Sok et al. (2016) examined the simultaneous role of “can do”
motivations/regulatory mode theory (locomotion and assessment
orientation) and “reason to” motivations/self-determination theory
(enjoyment of work and driven to work) as an explanatory
mechanism for service-sale ambidexterity. Data was collected from
239 salespersons operating in 9 B2B companies in the
pharmaceutical industry. The findings were in-line with to that of
Jasmand et al (2012), regarding the positive relationship between
locomotion orientation and service-sales ambidexterity, which is
positively moderated by high assessment orientation. There exists a
positive and significant interaction effect between ‘reason to’
motivations i.e. driven to work & enjoyment to work and service-
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sales ambidexterity both directly and interactively. Furthermore,
Locomotion orientation interacts positively with ‘reason to’
motivations to facilitate service-sales ambidexterity.
Agnihotri, Gabler, Itani, Jaramillo, and Krush, (2017) surveyed 219
salespersons and 162 customers in order to investigate the effect of
sales-service ambidexterity on salespersons role conflict, adaptive
behavior moderated by customer demandingness, and then the effect
of salesperson role conflict and adaptive behavior on customer
satisfaction with a salesperson. Their model indicates both positive
and negative aspects of the dual goal pursuit, it put a positive effect
on both adaptive selling behavior and role conflict among
salespersons which is positively moderated by customer
demandingness. Adaptive selling behaviors of salesperson do not
put any impact on customer satisfaction with them but role conflict
puts a negative impact on customer satisfaction with the salesperson.
Research by Gabler, Ogilvie, Rapp, and Bachrach, (2017) argues for
the dark side of ambidexterity while working with B2B sales and
service force of a US-based firm operating in hospitality industry
and explore how different combinations of customer orientation and
selling orientations, and their interaction, impact frontline
employees’ (FLE) pursuit of service and sales-related performance
outcomes. Data were collected from two sources viz; job-
performance measurements were collected from the firm and from
a sample of 297 entry – level frontline employees. The findings
assert that employees’ commitment to service quality increases with
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an increase in customer orientation and whereas sales performance
increases as employees become more sales-oriented. The
relationship between orientation and role conflict is based on how
the employee perceives conflict with respect to role demands.
Finally, when both selling and customer orientations are high,
creativity also tends to be high and even goes stronger when any one
or both of the orientations increases.
In a study on 163 frontline employees of a bank Faia and Vieira
(2017) explores the moderating effect of the control system on
regularity focus and service-sales ambidextrous behavior, customer
satisfaction and sales performance of frontline employees. The
initial results regarding the effects regularity focus on ambidextrous
behavior were in-line with Jasmand et al. (2012) addition to that the
interactive effect of locomotion and assessment orientation are
amplified under the behavior-based control system. Positive relation
is found between ambidextrous behavior of the frontline employee
and sales performance, customer satisfaction under outcome-based
control systems.
New and existing product selling ambidexterity
Van Der Borgh and Schepers (2014) surveyed 104 sales agents from
a Norwegian subsidiary of a large European consumer electronics
retailer to advances how retail managers can guide salesperson in
selling new and existing products to optimize net profits by
assessing the impact of manager’s ambidextrous orientation on
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salesperson’s performance via salesperson’s task autonomy and
moderating role of performance feedback and employee age on
relationship between task autonomy and performance. The
outcomes of the study show a negative impact of sales manager’s
ambidextrous orientation on salespersons performance in selling of
new and existing products, although sales manager’s orientation for
new product is positively related to salesperson’s performance in
selling for new product and sales manager’s orientation for existing
products is positively related to salesperson’s performance in selling
for existing product. Sales manager’s ambidextrous orientation is
positively related to salesperson’s task autonomy which has a
positive impact on salesperson’s performance for selling new
products. Feedback negatively moderates the relationship between
task autonomy and performance in selling new products and
positively moderates the relationship between task autonomy and
performance in selling existing products. Moreover, age strengthens
the relationship between task autonomy and performance in selling
both new and existing products
van der Borgh et al. (2017) surveyed 154 sales personnel of a
European ICT company to assess how field salespeople can be
influenced to pursue proactive selling for new and existing products
under two different guidance mechanisms: structural i.e.
salesperson’s organizational identification (OI) and situational i.e.
sales manager’s product-selling ambidexterity. The results indicate
a positive effect on both structural and situational mechanism on the
proactive selling of new and existing products. Sales manager
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orientation towards the selling of new products is positively related
to the proactive sale of new and products and negatively to the
proactive sale of existing products by the salesperson. While sales
managers orientation towards the existing products is positively
related to the proactive sale of these products by the salesperson but
do not have any effect on the sale of new products. Salespersons
performance for either product is positively related to the proactive
selling of that product and long-term rewards had significant,
positive effects on new products sales performance. Furthermore,
Ambidextrous salespeople who combine the sale of new and
existing products proactively are better to achieve targets with
stability.
Ambidexterity in acquisition and retention of customers
De Carlo and Lam (2016) conducted three studies to assess the
ambidexterity in retention and acquisition context as to why the
salespersons develop a preference for farming over hunting and
vice-versa. The first study that was consisted of in-depth interviews
of sales and HR managers reveals that in personal selling, hunting
and farming orientation possess distinct trait-like individual
motivations like risk-taking, desire to win positive outcome focus
etc. towards hunting and routine preference, less aggressiveness,
analytical towards farming activities. The second study was
composed of the 357 salespersons of a B2B publicly-traded
industrial distribution firm. It revealed that salesperson promotion
focus is positively related to hunting orientation and salesperson
prevention focus is positively related to farming orientation.
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Ambidextrous salespersons (simultaneous hunting and farming)
produce higher profit margins when they are also customer oriented.
The third study which was done with 200 salespersons that were
randomly selected from a panel has drawn attention towards the fact
that under low expected hunting success the relationship between
promotion focus and hunting orientation is significantly positive and
under high expected hunting success hunting orientation is
positively related to prevention orientation. Furthermore,
acquisition-based compensation plans are effective in making
prevention-oriented salespersons becoming more hunting oriented.
By surveying 296 sales managers and by the use of time-lagged
archival performance data from 174 firms Nijssen et al. (2017)
identified how sales organization capabilities like incentive
management, sales training, and cross-functional cooperation
capabilities assist in creating ambidextrous sales organizations in
hunting and farming. The findings reveal that sales incentives and
cross-functional cooperation are positively correlated with sales
organizational ambidexterity. Cross-functional cooperation
capabilities also have a moderating effect on sales training
capabilities and ambidextrous sales organization.
Ambidexterity in Efficiency-flexibility
Kao and Chen (2016) surveyed 205 flight attendants in order to
assess the performance of flight attendants achieving ambidexterity
in service quality and flexibility and analyzing the moderating role
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of proactive personality, emotional intelligence and extrinsic
rewards on the relationship between intrinsic motivation and
individual ambidexterity. The results show a significant positive
relationship between intrinsic motivation and individual
ambidexterity which is positively moderated by emotional
intelligence and negatively moderated by proactive personality and
extrinsic rewards. Furthermore, individual ambidexterity is also
positively related to service performance.
In the most recent of works to address the efficiency and flexibility
issue of the frontline service employees, Yu et al. (2018) studied 770
nurses of a large hospital. The study demonstrates that individual
characteristics like attitudes, perceptions of others expectations of
their behaviors, and self-efficacy directly affect the efficiency–
flexibility ambidexterity and found a significant positive
relationship between employees efficient–flexibility ambidexterity
and their overall performance.
Conclusion
The paper was aimed to, thematize the ambidexterity at individual
employee level on the basis of various dimension, find antecedents
of ambidexterity at frontline employees and present avenues for
future researches. The first objective is achieved by carving-out
ambidexterity at individual level into four dimensions viz: service-
sale ambidexterity, selling new and existing products, acquisition
and retention of customers, ambidexterity in achieving efficiency
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and flexibility and providing a brief summary of studies conducted
under various dimensions. Most of the studies advocate for the
positive impact of frontline employee ambidexterity on customer
satisfaction, trust, and long-term benefits. Both selling and service
orientations increase creativity among frontline employees, with
proactive selling of new and existing products employees are better
to achieve their targets with stability. Employees who are
ambidextrous in acquiring new and retaining old customers produce
higher profit margins. The second objective was to find antecedents
of ambidexterity at frontline employee level which is achieved by
identifying two broad categories of antecedents of ambidexterity i.e.
internal and external antecedents. For the accomplishment of our
third objective, which was to identify the areas which are
overlooked till date by researchers, a separate section at the end of
in this paper is devoted as direction for future researches.
Directions for future research
In order to apprehend the ambidextrous behavior of frontline
employee researches have been undertaken to assess: performance
of ambidextrous employees, impact of leader relationship on
ambidexterity, effect of control system on ambidextrous behavior,
ambidexterity in selling new and existing products, service-sales,
hunting-farming, efficiency-flexibility etc. as the understanding of
ambidexterity at individual frontline employee level is still in
emerging phase and much more is still left overlooked. In this
section, few new areas are provided on which the researchers may
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work to provide more ‘dexterity’ to ambidexterity at the frontline
employee level.
Ambidexterity and work-life balance
Ambidexterity is a mechanism to handle confronting tensions of
exploitation and exploration to which Gupta, Smith, & Shalley
(2006) pointed that for an individual the simultaneous access to
exploitation and exploration is somewhat typical in comparison to
an organization. So, in order to comprehend the impact of
ambidextrous behavior on individual employee’s personal life, the
study needs to be done to analyze the work-life balance of an
ambidextrous employee. Moreover, a comparative assessment of the
work-life balance of employee with dual orientation (ambidexterity)
and with single orientation may also be made.
Innate and Imposed ambidexterity
Work by Kao and Chen (2016), reflect the positive impact of
intrinsic motivation on employee ambidexterity, referring to that a
new dimension regarding ambidexterity can come into
consideration i.e. “innate” and “imposed” ambidexterity, whether
ambidexterity is the outcome of the individual internal desire to be
multi-tasking or it is something that an employee perceives as a
burden that a demanding organization imposes on him. Further
researches will be of great importance in finding the differences in
antecedents of innate and imposed ambidexterity and carving out the
measures to effectively manage these two types of ambidexterity.
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Customer and Organization orientation
Till date the ambidextrous behavior of employees that is being
studied is customer oriented only whereby an employee is focused
to: provide service-sale, selling new and existing products,
retaining-hunting for customers only. Researches need to be
conducted assessing ambidextrous behavior of frontline employees
with both customer and organization orientation. For instance, think
of a salesperson responsible for selling goods to serve his customer
i.e. customer orientation, and with that, he/she is also responsible to
collect revenues from the customer i.e. organization orientation. In
both the cases there lies a difference in behavior of the salesperson
because at the time of ‘selling’ salesperson need to be soft and
exhibit friendly behavior to the customer while at the time of
‘collection’ especially when the customer delays the payment,
salesperson need to deal him in a different way in order to recover
the money without churn.
Development opportunities for ambidextrous employees
Extant sales literature has witnessed an enhanced performance of
ambidextrous employees related to the achievement of sales targets
and customer satisfaction but none of the studies to date have shown
the promotion aspect of ambidextrous employees. The area of study
may be whether ambidextrous employees are promoted to higher
levels faster than non-ambidextrous employees.
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Gender wise differentiation in ambidexterity
Women in this era constitute for a substantial part of the workforce
and according to a report by World Bank
(https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.FE.ZS?end=2
018&start=1990&view=chart), the percentage of women in the total
workforce was 39.22 in 2018. Moreover, there are various key
positions in an organization which is reserved for women or they are
preferred over men for those positions. With the considerable
amount of differences in attitudes, habits, behavior, likes-dislikes of
women as compared to men, there is a need to study that whether or
not, there exists a difference in ambidextrous behavior of women
employees as compared to men employees, and to envisage for
better managing ambidextrous women workforce.
ANVESH-2019 DOCTORAL RESEARCH CONFERENCE IN
MANAGEMENT
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