Acting ambidextrously in retail banking to achieve service and sales goals simultaneously: A multilevel perspective

Abstract

Ambidexterity refers to an organization¿s capacity to achieve two seemingly conflicting goals simultaneously in this study, the ability of customer-facing employees to achieve sales and service goals at the same time. We examine a range of organizational contextual variables (i.e. empowerment, team support, fairness of rewards, and transformational leadership) to empirically model the antecedents of ambidexterity at the individual and branch levels in a retail banking setting. We found that all the contextual variables have a significant impact on branch ambidexterity at the individual level; however, only empowerment, team support, and fairness of rewards have a significant group-level effect on branch ambidexterity. We also found a positive relationship between branch ambidexterity and branch financial performance.