Ambidextrous Leadership: A Theoretical Perspective

The ability to pursue, simultaneously, exploitation and exploration, being ambidextrous, appears to be the best way to promote innovation and enhance the company's performance. Ambidexterity is a leadership challenge where leaders need to balance ongoing and new activities, associating long-term and short-term thinking. This new intellectual style is introduced as ambidextrous leadership. Studies associated to individual ambidexterity remain limited and scarce. The aim of our paper is to propose a conceptualisation to ambidextrous leadership suggesting that It is a composite of three leadership styles: flexible leadership, situational leadership and versatile leadership.