ABSTRACT

Abstract: The promise of process management practices is that as organizations focus on variance reduction and increased process control, they will drive both speed and organizational efficiency. However, this promise also accentuates the dark side of process management. These practices will increasingly favor exploitative innovations at the expense of exploratory innovations. This inertia works to impede major change and transforms core competencies to core rigidities. Managers must exercise caution against considerable institutional pressures pushing process management activities. They need to adopt a more nuanced approach to creating organizations that can celebrate both variance reduction in the service of exploitation and variance creation in the service of exploration. This can be achieved by adopting an ambidextrous organizational design.