The Venture Firm’s Ambidexterity: Do Transformational Leaders Boost Organizational Learning for Venture Growth?

Abstract

Having experienced the turbulent change in corporate value rankings over the past 20 years, companies are paying attention to their reorganization to quickly recognize changes and proactively adapt to these changes for survival. This study examines the relationships and intervening ambidexterity mechanisms between CEOs’ leadership style and employees’ learning agility. Using multilevel regression, we analyze hypotheses on a sample of 102 participating CEOs and 236 employees. Results reveal that the ambidextrous organization, which pursues the current organizational development while constantly adapting to changing environments, plays a role as a partial mediator between transformational leadership and members’ learning agility. These results explain that to increase the organization’s agility, a systematic organizational structure system that stimulates members’ motives and simultaneously pursues utilization and exploration must be established through clear goals and appropriate stimuli even in an uncertain environment. Our finding contributes to an understanding of how the CEO’s leadership style affects employees’ learning agility in ventures and to what extent the contextual ambidextrous structure influences the relationship.