Works
- Information processing as an integrating concept in organizational design, Academy of Management Review 3(3), from p. 613, 1978
- Ambidextrous organizations: managing evolutionary and revolutionary change, California Management Review 38(4), 8 to 29, 1996
- Exploitation, exploration, and process management: the productivity dilemma revisited, Academy of Management Review 28(2), 238 to 256, 2003
- The ambidextrous organization, Harvard Business Review (April 2004), 2004
- Organizational ambidexterity: IBM and emerging business opportunities, California Management Review 51(4), 75 to 99, 2009
- Organizational designs and innovation streams, Industrial and Corporate Change 19(5), 1331 to 1366, 2010
- Organizational ambidexterity: past, present, and future, Academy of Management Perspectives 27(4), 324 to 338, 2013
In Organizational Structures
Known for
Organizational ambidexterity and innovation streams
Ideas
The ambidextrous organization. Firms that face periods of incremental change punctuated by discontinuous change must pursue incremental and discontinuous innovation at once, without letting adaptation to today's environment undermine their ability to adjust to radical change. Caveat: Practitioner-facing argument; the systematic evidence came later and is mixed (Junni and colleagues 2013).
Buffering exploration from process management. Process management helps in stable contexts but is inconsistent with all but incremental innovation, so it must be buffered from exploratory activities in ambidextrous forms. Caveat: Conceptual.
Ambidextrous designs and innovation streams. In 13 business units, ambidextrous designs executed innovation streams better than functional, cross-functional, and spinout designs, and the senior team's handling of contradictory architectures was crucial. Caveat: Thirteen units, studied by the form's originators.
Information processing in design. With Nadler, Tushman set out information processing as an integrating concept for design. Caveat: Conceptual.