Research On Innovation Stragtegy Orientations From A View Of CEO Leadership And Top Management Team Characteristics

In today's turbulent environment,the sustainability of a firm's success is increasingly rooted in the ability to purse both explorative and exploitative innovation. Organizational scholars have use the term"ambidexterity" to describe firms are capable of exploring and exploiting with equally high intensity.However,explorative and exploitative orientations emerge from contradictory knowledge process and architecture, researchers debate on how firms can achieve both orientations and whether or not such a pursuit results in higher performance.The tension between exploration and exploitation reflects the strategic contradictions in organizational members' cognition,value and interest.These inconsistencies create fundamental senior manager challenges.Most existing studies focus on the effects of organizational and environmental factors on the integration of innovation orientations,there is a research gap on how CEO leadership and Top Management Team impact innovation orientations.This research focuses on below issues:(1)How do CEO transformational and transactional leadership associate with exploitation and exploration orientation? How to facilitate ambidextrous innovation by CEO leadership?(2)What are the effects of firm's resource and external environment on innovation orientations? What are the moderate effects of resources and environment on the relationship between CEO leadership and organizational innovation orientations?(3)How does TMT heterogeneity affect ambidextrous innovation? How does TMT behavioral integration impact ambidextrous innovation? What are the interaction effects between TMT heterogeneity and TMT behavioral integration?Although the research focuses on how senior leaders reconcile the contradiction in organizational innovation.We started by testing the effects of ambidextrous innovation on firm performance in order to provide a logical base for the research questions.Hierarchical regression of cross-functional data is conducted in this research to test the theoretical model.Data used in the research were obtained by survey. Questionnaires for CEO and for managers at the vice-president level were filled out by CEOs and vice-presidents respectively.The sample is framed in technological SMEs. Technological SMEs represent a vital component of national innovation system.SMEs have fewer hierarchical levels and have to rely more on the ability of their TMT to attain ambidexterity.127 effective samples were from municipalities in Shandong, Jiangsu and Henan.The response rate is 65.5%(127/200).The main purpose of the questionnaires is to help identify the data of CEO leadership,TMT heterogeneity and TMT behavioral integration,firm exploration and exploitation,and other relevant data. These data were then used to test the theoretical hypothesis.Major results of the research show that:(1)exploration and exploitation impact organizational performance in different ways,and ambidextrous innovation has additional positive effect on firm performance;(2)CEO transformational leadership and transactional leadership associate with different innovation orientations,CEOs who possess both transformational behaviors and transactional behaviors will benefit ambidextrous innovation;(3)Organizational slack has negative effect on ambidextrous orientation,both organizational slack and environment uncertainty are situational factors,and the effect of transactional leadership shows cross-situational stability while transformational leadership shows situational dependency;(4)TMT functional heterogeneity and tenure heterogeneity significantly affect ambidextrous innovation, while TMT educational heterogeneity does not have direct influence;(5)TMT behavioral integration has strong positive effect on ambidextrous innovation and it's interaction with TMT heterogeneity is also significasnt.This research makes several contributions to the literature.First,viewing from the perspective of CEO and TMT,this research reveals how strategic leadership impacts the strategic orientations of organizational innovation.Second,this research provides new insight into leadership complexity.Through systematically discussing the influence of transformational leadership and transactional leadership on exporation and exploitation, it is verified that the two leadership styles have equal importance on ambidextrous innovation.The results indicated resource scarcity does not necessarily lead to strategic conflict,which suggests Leader's behavioral complexity,as a cutting edge of leadership research,is critical to reconcile strategic contradictions.Third,this research reveals the process of incurring ambidextrous innovation through the interaction of TMT heterogeneity and behavioral integration.Moreover,past studies are mostly based on western society,while China society has its own characteristics.The empirical evidence from Chinese technological SMEs shows TMT heterogeneity and behavioral integration, which jointly performed,can help firms balance the inconsistence in cognitional and psychological factors link to exploration and exploitation.We also identify two different types of TMT heterogeneity,job related heterogeneity and non-job related heterogeneity,which extends the TMT research based on upper echelons perspective.