An Empirical Study Of The Moderating Effect Of Justice Perceptions On The Relationship Between Cooperative Ambidexterity And Performance

Aiming at understanding the real situations in our nation’s inter-hospital cooperation, thisstudy focuses on the topics about efficiency of interorganizational cooperation actions andthe related justice problems. The issue of interorganizational cooperation has caused thecontinuous research enthusiasms of scholars in the domains of strategic alliance, channelintegration, joint venture and cooperative R&D alliances. More and more scholars andorganizational leaders have reached an agreement that the future’s competition is thecompetition under the organization cooperation. At the same time, the cooperativerelationships are also emerging in the medical systems. Along with the developments of thecountry’s reforms in medical system, the inter-hospital cooperation has been seen as astrategic movement which can ascend hospital quality, service quality and technologicalcapabilities. Through the impetus of both market competition and government support,various types of cooperation have been developed among hospitals. Therefore, it is veryimportant to examine the phoneme of the inter-hospital cooperation.In particular, how to realize the innovation in the conditions when the partner feels fair/orunfair, and to further improve the organizational performance is a key research question.Existing researches have provided us some beneficial research ideas and starting points. First,the framework of interorganizational cooperation has told us that cooperation performancewill be affected by the cooperative actions, and the efficiencies of these cooperative actionswill be affected by the cooperative atmosphere. Second, ambidexterity perspective has toldus that there exists the difference between exploration and exploitation in the process oforganizational learning, revolution and innovation. Based on the consideration of balanceand complementarity of exploration and exploitation, we can classify the learning actions asbalanced ambidextrous learning and combined ambidextrous learning. By applying thisperspective into the interorganizational cooperation study, we can classify the cooperativeactions as balanced cooperative ambidexterity and combined cooperative ambidexterity.Third, the justice theory has told us that justice perceptions in the cooperation can beclassified as distributive justice, procedural justice and interactive justice; and the justiceperception as a key cooperative atmosphere factor will affect the efficiency of thecooperative actions. Based upon above implications, we integrate the justice theory and organizationalambidexterity perspective into the interorganizational cooperation study, and construct aframework which links the action, justice perception and cooperative performance together.Our framework contributes to the existing researches as follows: first, the existing findingsin the organizational ambidexterity perspective have not introduced this construct into thedomain of inter-organization cooperation, and the measurement of the ambidexterity in thesefindings is still controversial; meanwhile, these studies have not given the analysis ofmoderating effects of ambidexterity–performance linkage. Second, most existing literaturein justice study has focus either on the direct impact of justice perception on the performance,or on the antecedents of justice, there are little research about the moderating effect of justiceperception on the action–performance linkage.For the purpose of our study, we incorporate the following key topics in the paper: first,based on the current progress of ambidexterity perspective, we extend the research idea ofbalanced and combined ambidexterity into the study of interorganizational cooperation, anddefine and contrast the difference between balanced cooperative ambidexterity andcombined cooperative ambidexterity. Second, based on the justice perception analysis, weexamine the respective moderating effect of distributive, procedural and interactive justiceon the efficiency of cooperative actions. Third, we collect data from hospitals in China’scities and rurar areas to do the empirical studies.Comparing to the existing studies, the innovative contributions of our study reside in thefollowing aspects:(1) For the study of organizational ambidexterity, we extend the notion ofambidexterity from intra-firm domain into the inter-firm domain, and give the definition ofthe balanced cooperative ambidexterity and combined cooperative ambidexterity, andanalyze the difference impacts of these two actions upon the cooperative performance. Weargue that the notion of ambidexterity is more complex than the previous notion of eithercoexistence or complementarity, but a structure with both balance and complementarity.Therefore, our study extends the current ambidexterity study in its concept, measurementand application scope.(2) For the study of interorganizational cooperation, we extend the current conceptualframework of cooperation action–moderator–cooperation performance, highlight thecontributing roles of both balanced cooperative ambidexterity and combined cooperativeambidexterity as well as the moderating effects of types of justice perception on the action–performance linkage, and examine these effects in the context of inter-hospital cooperation.In particular, the findings show that realizing the balance and complementarity ofexploration and exploitation in the cooperation is exceptionally important. Therefore, wecombine the study of interorganizational cooperation and organizational ambidexterity, andtreat the process of cooperation as a complex process of having exploration and exploitationcoexist, mutual complement, and mutual convert in some settings. (3) For the study of justice perception, we confirm the key moderating role of justiceperception as an atmosphere factors, and its impacts on the efficiency of cooperative action.In particular, we analyze the moderating effects of three different types of justice perception:distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactive justice, and find that the moderatingeffects are different in respective cooperative ambidexterity modes. In some specificsituations, the perception of justice is not always leads to the expected efficiency increase.Meanwhile, the findings also indict that under most situations of high level of justiceperception, the efficiency of both balanced cooperative ambidexterity and combinedcooperative ambidexterity will be increased, which confirms that the core deductions ofjustice theory are being supported in these moderating models.