Ambidexterity Based Explorative and Exploitative Capability: The Examining Relationship Between Transformational Leadership, Ambidexterity and Firm Innovativeness

Today's market conditions encourage organizations to gain new resources and skills in order to deliver new products and services that meet rapidly changing customer needs while at the same time compel them to use their resources and skills effectively. The organizations that successfully fulfill these two requirements are defined as “ambidextrous”. In this study, the relationship between transformational leadership – a leadership mechanism that actually supports organizational employees to use both existing resources and capabilities in a better way and pursuing innovations – and ambidexterity is empirically examined. In addition to the effect of ambidexterity on firm innovativeness and the mediating role of ambidexterity on the relationship between transformational leadeship and firm innovativeness is also examined in this study. In order to test the proposed hypotheses, the data of 304 questionnaires from 61 firms operating in the Eastern Marmara Region are analyzed using the Particial Least Squares (SmartPLS 3.0) approach based on the structural equation modeling. According to this, individualized consideration has a positive effect on explorative capability while the idealized influence has a positive effect on exploitative capability, finally intellectual stimulation has a positive effect on both explorative and exploitative capability. On the other hand, ambidexterity on the base of explorative and exploitative capabilities also has a positive effect on firm innovativeness. Finally the findings show that explorative capability full mediaties the relationship between individualized consideration and firm innovativeness while organizational ambidexterity fully mediates the relationship between intellectual stimulation and firm innovativeness. The findings are discussed and interpreted at discussion part of the study.