Automation, organizational ambidexterity and the stability of employee relations: new tensions arising between corporate entrepreneurship, innovation management and stakeholder management

While previous entrepreneurship research has only seldom drawn on organizational ambidexterity, the analysis of the important contemporary tensions among entrepreneurship, innovation management and strategic management issues may be facilitated by more closely analysing organizational ambidexterity in entrepreneurial settings. In this paper, we follow this thinking and more closely analyse an often applied form of corporate entrepreneurship: automation. Such automation is transferring work that was formerly conducted by humans to machines and may thus result in new tensions between corporate entrepreneurship, innovation management and the management of organizational stakeholders such as employees. The present paper investigates whether increased automation lowers the stability of firms' relationships with their employees. In addition, we expect that this relationship is moderated by organizational ambidexterity, as employees may have perceived ambidexterity as a signal that their firm will not overly invest in exploitation only, but maintain a balance between exploitation and exploration. Drawing on stakeholder theory, previous insights into corporate entrepreneurship and a survey of German Mittelstand firms, our findings show that highly ambidextrous firms are indeed more vulnerable to automation, leading to lower employee relational stability. Our findings thus suggest that in highly ambidextrous firms, novel tensions around automation-related corporate entrepreneurship will be detrimental to the stability of the firm's relations with one of its key stakeholder groups: employees.

Digitalization and entrepreneurial firms' resilience to pandemic crises: Evidence from COVID-19 and the German Mittelstand

While stressing the relevance of context, the organizational resilience literature has so far not extensively examined resilience in times of healthcare crises such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Parasite Stress Theory of Values suggests that such pandemic crises have detrimental impacts on entrepreneurial activity due to social distancing and its effects on interaction, collaboration, and innovation. However, alternatives to personal contact now available thanks to digitalization, have not yet been examined. We expect entrepreneurial firms with more digitalized business models to show higher resilience to pandemic crises, especially those highly affected by globalization and more for non-family businesses than for family businesses. Based on a survey of German Mittelstand firms in the midst of the crisis induced by COVID-19, our findings broadly support our expectations and thus help qualify the Parasite Stress Theory of Values and contribute to a better understanding of organizational resilience in times of pandemic crises.

Financial managers and organizational ambidexterity in the German Mittelstand: the moderating role of strategy involvement

Relying on the upper-echelons perspective, this paper investigates the effect of financial managers’ characteristics on the level of organizational ambidexterity reached in German Mittelstand firms. These firms are often depicted as highly innovative and able to compete on worldwide markets despite significant resource constraints. We theorize that skilled financial managers are very important in making the optimal use of Mittelstand firms’ scarce resources and, in particular, for balancing exploitation and exploration, thus reaching high levels of ambidexterity. Our findings from a survey of German Mittelstand firms broadly confirm our expectations and show that financial managers’ individual entrepreneurial behavior correlates positively with the firms’ level of organizational ambidexterity. In addition, we find that firms with financial managers having enjoyed business education are more likely to reach high levels of ambidexterity if these financial managers are heavily involved in strategy development. Overall, these results indicate that well-suited financial managers are an important human resource for Mittelstand firms. In addition, our findings are among the first to show that financial managers not only influence finance and accounting choices, but also innovation-related outcomes such as organizational ambidexterity.

Sample Selection in Systematic Literature Reviews of Management Research

Systematic review techniques are about to become the “new normal” in reviews of management research. However, there is not yet much advice on how to organize the sample selection process as part of such reviews. This article addresses this void and analyzes this vital part of systematic reviews in more detail. In particular, it offers a critical review of systematic literature reviews published in the Academy of Management Annals and the International Journal of Management Reviews between 2004 and 2018. Based on this methodological literature review, the article presents issues to consider in the most critical choices during the sample selection process. Furthermore, this review identifies several descriptive features such as the mean number of research items included in systematic reviews, the mean number of databases used, and the mean coverage period of such reviews. These numbers may be used as benchmark figures in future reviews.