Building contextual ambidexterity in a software company to improve firm-level coordination

Software organizations increasingly face contradictory strategic choices as they develop customized and packaged solutions for the market. They need to improve efficiency of development processes while at the same time adapting to emerging customer needs; they need to exploit software products in re...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEuropean journal of information systems Vol. 20; no. 6; pp. 674 - 690
Main Authors Napier, Nannette P, Mathiassen, Lars, Robey, Daniel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Taylor & Francis 01.11.2011
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
action research
Adaptability
Analysis
Business and Management
Business Information Systems
contextual ambidexterity
Corporate planning
Customer satisfaction
Efficiency
firm-level coordination
Information Systems and Communication Service
Information technology
Innovation/Technology Management
Innovations
Market planning
Operations Research/Decision Theory
Performance management
Product development
Project management
Research Article
Social support
Software industry
software organization
Studies
Teams
Technological change
software organization
action research
firm-level coordination
contextual ambidexterity
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Summary:Software organizations increasingly face contradictory strategic choices as they develop customized and packaged solutions for the market. They need to improve efficiency of development processes while at the same time adapting to emerging customer needs; they need to exploit software products in relation to existing customers while simultaneously exploring new technology and market opportunities; and, they need to consider both incremental and radical innovations. While the integration of such opposing strategies requires software organizations to become ambidextrous, there is limited actionable advice on how managers can develop such capability. Against this backdrop, we report from a two-year action research study into a small software firm, TelSoft. Based on Pettigrew's contextualist inquiry, we develop a framework that integrates existing theory on contextual ambidexterity with a generic process for improving software organizations, and we apply this framework to analyze how TelSoft improved its coordination of products, projects, and innovation efforts. As a result, we offer principles for how software managers can build ambidextrous capability to improve firm-level coordination.
ISSN:0960-085X
1476-9344
DOI:10.1057/ejis.2011.32