Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The International Journal of Human Resource Management on 20/09/2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09585192.2016.1233447
Accepted author manuscript, 299 KB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Hard, soft or ambidextrous?
T2 - which influence style promotes managers' task performance and the role of political skill
AU - Kapoutsis , Ilias
AU - Papalexandris , Alexandros
AU - Thanos, Ioannis
N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The International Journal of Human Resource Management on 20/09/2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09585192.2016.1233447
PY - 2019/4/1
Y1 - 2019/4/1
N2 - Ambidexterity at the manager level focuses on the crucial, but underexplored, role of managers’ knowledge, skills, and behaviors to address competing demands and promote organizational ambidexterity. As such, to successfully complete their assigned duties, managers need to employ the appropriate interpersonal style and calibrate their behavior to different contextual demands. This study highlights the role of the individual in the ambidexterity process by introducing the concept of influence tactic ambidexterity, to denote the frequent use of both hard and soft influence and investigating its role on task performance. Drawing on the literature on ambidexterity and HRM, we analyze data from a sample of 172 middle managers and their corresponding 68 supervisors working for multinational organizations, and provide evidence that influence tactic ambidexterity relates to higher levels and less variation in managers’ task performance compared to the sole use of either hard or soft tactics. Our findings also show that political skill positively moderates the relationship between influence tactic ambidexterity and a manager’s task performance. Therefore, this study suggests that influence tactic ambidexterity and political skill can be considered valuable HR assets for managers.
AB - Ambidexterity at the manager level focuses on the crucial, but underexplored, role of managers’ knowledge, skills, and behaviors to address competing demands and promote organizational ambidexterity. As such, to successfully complete their assigned duties, managers need to employ the appropriate interpersonal style and calibrate their behavior to different contextual demands. This study highlights the role of the individual in the ambidexterity process by introducing the concept of influence tactic ambidexterity, to denote the frequent use of both hard and soft influence and investigating its role on task performance. Drawing on the literature on ambidexterity and HRM, we analyze data from a sample of 172 middle managers and their corresponding 68 supervisors working for multinational organizations, and provide evidence that influence tactic ambidexterity relates to higher levels and less variation in managers’ task performance compared to the sole use of either hard or soft tactics. Our findings also show that political skill positively moderates the relationship between influence tactic ambidexterity and a manager’s task performance. Therefore, this study suggests that influence tactic ambidexterity and political skill can be considered valuable HR assets for managers.
KW - Ambidexterity
KW - influence tactics
KW - task performance
KW - political skill
U2 - 10.1080/09585192.2016.1233447
DO - 10.1080/09585192.2016.1233447
M3 - Journal article
VL - 30
SP - 618
EP - 647
JO - The International Journal of Human Resource Management
JF - The International Journal of Human Resource Management
SN - 0958-5192
IS - 4
ER -