THE IMPACT OF STRATEGIC LANGUAGE ON EMPLOYEE AMBIDEXTERITY

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that the leader's spoken communication has on employee ambidexterity. Specifically, the study draws from the strategic leadership perspective and motivating language theory literature to posit that the leader's use of motivating language can foster employee exploitative and explorative behaviors. This paper also investigates how these behaviors can be beneficial to the firm by investigating its impact on employee absenteeism and turnover intention. Design/Methodology: This study is based on a cross-sectional survey of 206 Vietnamese employees. After several stringent tests for reliability, validity, multicollinearity, model fit, and model quality, the data is analyzed with a partial least squares structural equation model. The findings indicate that leaders can strategically use verbal communication to encourage the employees' individual ambidexterity. Further analyses show that employee ambidexterity generally has a favorable impact on work-related outcomes by decreasing absenteeism and turnover intention. This study suggests that employee ambidexterity can be stimulated with verbal communication that gives clear directions, gives a higher meaning to the employee's work, and shows genuine care for the employee as an individual. As a practical implication, this may highlight the need for firms to implement training programs for managers to effectively communicate with their employees