How Strategic Leaders Foster Engineering Organizations’ Ambidexterity: A Qualitative Study of Exploration and Exploitation Practices

Abstract

This study aimed to explore how strategic leaders foster organizational ambidexterity by balancing exploration-oriented and exploitation-oriented practices in organizations operating in Tehran. A qualitative research design was employed using semi-structured interviews with 22 strategic leaders, senior managers, innovation managers, and business-unit directors from medium and large organizations in Tehran. Participants were selected through purposive sampling based on their direct involvement in strategic decision-making, innovation management, operational improvement, or organizational transformation. Data collection continued until theoretical saturation was reached. Interviews lasted between 45 and 75 minutes, were audio-recorded with participants’ consent, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using thematic analysis. NVivo software was used to organize transcripts, manage coding, compare emerging categories, and refine themes. Credibility was enhanced through member checking, peer review, prolonged engagement with the data, and the use of direct participant quotations. Analysis generated four main categories: strategic framing of dual priorities, structural separation with integrative coordination, leadership practices for exploratory learning, and disciplined exploitation through performance systems. Participants described ambidexterity as a leadership capability rather than only a structural arrangement. Strategic leaders fostered exploration by legitimizing experimentation, tolerating controlled failure, scanning external opportunities, and creating cross-functional innovation spaces. They supported exploitation by strengthening routines, monitoring performance indicators, improving processes, and protecting operational discipline. The findings indicated that ambidexterity emerged when leaders actively connected innovation initiatives with current business priorities and prevented exploration and exploitation from becoming competing organizational silos. Strategic leaders play a central role in translating organizational ambidexterity from an abstract strategic aspiration into everyday managerial practice. The study suggests that ambidexterity depends on leaders’ capacity to create strategic clarity, design flexible structures, encourage exploratory learning, and maintain operational discipline. These findings contribute to ambidexterity literature by explaining the micro-level leadership practices through which exploration and exploitation are simultaneously enacted in organizational settings.