Abstract

The notion of productivities dilemma indicates that organizations need to balance the tension between operation and innovation to ensure both short term performances and long term adaptability. Ambidexterity as a solution to productivity dilemma has lack analysis on micro-level ambidexterity. In this paper, a group process view and a stochastic queuing model were adopted to study the optimal time arrangement between operation and innovation. Our research reveals that time division between operation and innovation will have negative impact on operational efficiency; however, such negative impact can be managed through certain rhythm of time division between operation and innovation. Specifically, arranging frequent innovative activities is optimal to the situation between operation and exploitive innovation; whereas arranging infrequent innovative activities is optimal to the situation between operation and explorative innovation. Further, our result also may help managers to identify the timing to accelerate or decelerate the innovative activities while keeping the operational efficiency in an optimal state.

Key words: Dilemma, ambidexterity, operational efficiency, group process, process variability.