The role of ambidextrous leadership in developing team-level ambidexterity: Exploring the supporting roles of reflective conversations and ambidextrous HRM

ABSTRACT This study highlights how constructs of importance to management in Africa – ambidextrous leadership and team learning – can extend or modify our existing management theories. Adopting an exploratory design with an interpretive philosophy, this study explores how supermarket store managers engage their subordinates in team learning sessions to enable their collective ambidexterity, facilitated by the presence of reflective conversations (RC) and ambidextrous human resource management (HRM) policies and practices. Based on our raw data, we develop a process-based model that shows how ambidextrous leadership behaviors can help develop team-level ambidexterity, including the supporting roles of RC and ambidextrous HRM practices in the process. This model thus seeks to motivate theoretically future ambidexterity research in Africa, as the theoretical ideas and themes in this study can be replicated and be broadly applied to future ambidexterity research on the continent. This model will, therefore, contribute to the theoretical development of African management literature and, accordingly, adds significant value to the mainstream ambidexterity literature.