Ambidextrous leaders and employee innovation, well-being, leader perception: A moderation

Although a critical success factor for innovation, earlier research on leadership did not sufficiently account for the complexity and tensions during innovation processes, leading to heterogeneous findings. I seek to fill this gap by examining the effects of ambidextrous leadership – the combination of opposing but complementary opening and closing leader behavior targeted at enabling employee exploration and exploitation simultaneously – on innovation and leader perceptions. Additionally, I investigate potential negative consequences of this complex leadership concept on employees’ work-related stress and anxiety. Finally, I consider employees’ cognitive flexibility to strengthen the positive and mitigate the negative consequences of ambidextrous leadership. Results are based on a survey of 127 employees. Both leader behaviors were found to positively relate to employees’ perceptions of leader effectiveness and satisfaction with their leader, while opening leader behavior supported both idea generation and implementation. Employees’ cognitive flexibility strengthened these relationships and enabled them to cope with the complexity of having an ambidextrous leader, improving their well-being. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.