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Building Dynamic Resilience through Strategic Coherence and Ambidextrous Leadership
Organizations face the paradox of simultaneously exploiting current product strengths while exploring new opportunities for innovation. Achieving this balance is critical for sustained competitiveness, yet many firms struggle to manage both effectively–a challenge noted by Danneels in 2011. Ambidextrous leadership offers a potential solution by enabling leaders to alternate between opening behaviors that foster exploration and closing that drive exploitation. However, realizing the full potential of this dual-focused approach also demands strategic coherence across multiple organizational levels, ensuring that individual, team, and corporate goals reinforce one another and move in the same overall direction. Practical guidance on implementing such dual-focused leadership remains limited–especially in product strategy contexts where firms must concurrently improve existing products and innovate new ones. This study develops a conceptual model linking ambidextrous leadership to dynamic resilience–a firm’s capacity to adapt and thrive amid disruptions–within the framework of product strategy. To test the model, we applied a quantitative survey of 87 managers from eight product-oriented companies in Eastern Europe and conducted statistical analyses, including factor analysis and regression modeling. Drawing on ambidexterity theory and leadership research, we formulate hypotheses and design a diagnostic survey instrument to evaluate ambidextrous leadership practices in product-oriented companies in Eastern Europe. The model illustrates how ambidextrous leaders balance short-term exploitation and long-term exploration to reinforce resilience while maintaining strategic coherence of resources, objectives, and processes. The anticipated contribution is twofold:(1) a theoretical advancement by integrating ambidextrous leadership and dynamic resilience, expanding understanding of how balancing efficiency and innovation enhances long-term organizational resilience; and (2) managerial guidance via a practical tool for assessing organizational ambidexterity and clear recommendations for fostering leadership behaviors that simultaneously drive performance and innovation. By fostering strong strategic coherence throughout the organization, this research will help managers harmonize product development practices with adaptive strategic objectives, thereby improving organizational adaptability and competitiveness.