Organizational Ambidexterity and Resilience: Moderating Effect of Transformational Leadership

Abstract

Businesses are still learning how to cope with system stress that overwhelmed the whole world during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2007-2008, COVID-19 pandemics in 2020, and other crises. Thereby, enterprises will be able not only to deal with uncertainty, that is becoming a “new standard”, but to benefit from it. As a result, the focus of the leaders has shifted from short-term, operational continuity to resilience. Earlier research suggested organizational ambidexterity as one of its antecedents and key factors for firms’ long-term survival and prosperity. However, little is known about the leadership role in ambidexterity literature. Most of the previous research were conducted in developed countries and placed emphasis on conceptual studies.  Thus, the main purpose of this study is to statistically examine the moderating effect of transformational leadership in the relationship between organizational ambidexterity and resilience using a sample of 323 usable questionnaires gathered from more than 80 Kazakhstani firms. The results of regression analysis statistically confirmed that organizational ambidexterity positively and significantly correlated with resilience. Further, results revealed the moderating role of transformational leadership in the linkage above. The study came up with an unexpected finding that transformational leadership directly and significantly influences resilience. The primary practical implication of this study is that leaders realize the feasibility of their investments in developing ambidextrous capabilities in their organizations and, particularly, senior management, since it was statistically proven in this research that it leads to higher resilience.