Transforming individual ambidexterity to organisational ambidexterity: a configurational perspective on leadership factors as an aggregating process

Organisational ambidexterity (i.e. the ability to balance exploration and exploitation) is crucial to organisations’ survival and development. It can be achieved at multiple levels, but the connection between different levels, especially from the individual to the firm level, has received scant attention in the literature. Utilising micro-foundations theory, this paper aims to study how leadership factors (i.e. top team management [TMT] behavioural integration, a chief executive officer’s [CEO] characteristics and ambidextrous behaviours, and senior managers’ ambidextrous behaviours) complete a mechanism to transform individual ambidexterity (IA) to organisational ambidexterity (OA), filling the gap in the IA–OA process. Our study provides a configurational perspective on finding the sufficient combined effort among different leadership factors to complete the IA–OA process.