A Study on Organizational Ambidexterity in Start-ups

Abstract

Organizational Ambidexterity refers to the organization’s capability to exploit their existing resources and explore new opportunities in the market. The study revolves around 2 factors that simultaneously lead to Organizational Ambidexterity i.e. Exploration and Exploitation. The study has been conducted for the start-ups having completed 3-7 years in the market. In order to gather the data, questionnaire was circulated to 200 start-ups based on the survey items used by Gibson and Birkinshaw (2004), He and Wong (2004), and Jansen et al. (2009). Data was received from 148 respondents which composed of employees, founder and co-founder of the start-ups. Findings revealed that there is high level of exploration in the start-ups which means that these start-ups focus on innovation to grab new opportunities in the market. It was also observed that these start-ups exploit their resources optimally i.e. they don’t waste the resources and use them to the optimum level. Data analysis indicated that both the exploration and exploitation together leads to organizational ambidexterity. The start-ups balance both their exploration and exploitation activities in such a manner that the organizational ambidexterity is achieved. Hence the hypothesis, exploration and exploitation impacts organizational ambidexterity has been proved through statistical analysis.