Abstract:

Companies seek to innovate in order to differentiate themselves from their competitors. To do this, they hire individuals who will potentially innovate. This requires that individuals have developed certain skills and abilities that will allow them to adapt and face a complex working world on the one hand, and to develop innovation on the other.

The development of these skills must be one of the main objectives of educational institutions.
Through ambidextrous leadership, students can develop skills related to exploration and exploitation, and ultimately develop innovation.

Ambidextrous leadership involves a combination of open and closed leadership behaviors to enhance innovation (Rosing, Frese & Bausch, 2011; Martínez-Climent, Rodríguez-García & Zeng, 2019). Open leadership behaviors refer to the stimulation of exploration seeking novel and risk-taking ideas, while closed leadership behaviors set certain limits and norms that must be met. Through this interaction, “out-of-the-box” thinking is achieved (Bouwmans et al., 2018). For authors such as Leal-Rodríguez and Albort-Morant (2019), experiential learning practices, which include methodologies such as gamification or learn-by-doing activities are essential to increase the students’ academic performance.

Recently the universities have recognized the need to adapt these new methodologies in their classes, in order to promote the entrepreneurial spirit of the students (Fischer & de Moraes, 2019). The objective of this research is to analyze the previous publications on the field of ambidextrous leadership and education to get to know the feasibility of application of ambidextrous leadership practices on schools and universities. The methodology applied is bibliometric analysis, which is a systematic literature review that allow the researcher analyze a high number of papers and extract relevant conclusions based on the scene of the whole.

The conclusion is that exercising or building ambidextrous minds, combining both exploratory and exploitative learning behaviors, allows to reach a high level in design thinking. Design thinking consists in solving the problems inherent in business activity as a designer solves problems related to design (Dunne and Martin, 2006). People with ambidextrous minds create a synergy between old and new knowledge, producing innovation by approaching problems and solutions in an unusual way.

References:
[1] Bouwmans, M., Runhaar, P., Wesselink, R., & Mulder, M. (2019). Leadership ambidexterity: Key to stimulating team learning through team-oriented HRM? An explorative study among teacher teams in VET colleges. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 47(5), 694–711.
[2] Dunne, D., & Martin, R. (2006). Design thinking and how it will change management education: An interview and discussion. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 5(4), 512-523.
[3] Fischer, B. B., de Moraes, G. H. S. M., & Schaeffer, P. R. (2019). Universities' institutional settings and academic entrepreneurship: Notes from a developing country. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 147, 243-252.
[4] Leal-Rodríguez, A. L., & Albort-Morant, G. (2019). Promoting innovative experiential learning practices to improve academic performance: Empirical evidence from a Spanish Business School. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 4(2), 97-103.
[5] Martínez-Climent, C., Rodríguez-García, M., & Zeng, J. (2019). Ambidextrous leadership, social entrepreneurial orientation, and operational performance. Sustainability, 11(3), 890.
[6] Rosing, K., Frese, M., & Bausch, A. (2011). Explaining the heterogeneity of the leadershipinnovation relationship: Ambidextrous leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 22(5), 956-974.

Keywords:

Ambidextrous Leadership, Education, University, Business Activity.