Individual learning ambidexterity behavior and individual job performance in services: the role of organizational structure

This study analyzed the impact of individual learning ambidexterity on individual job performance and tested the moderating effects of the organizational structure, represented in this research by formalization, decentralization, and structural differentiation. Despite the importance of individual learning ambidexterity, there is a limited understanding of how employees’ explorative and exploitative learning behaviors affect their individual job performance. The study expands the research by confirming the relevance of individual learning ambidexterity for individual performance for non-managerial employees; an understudied research setting for individual ambidexterity. We demonstrate that individual learning ambidexterity is positively correlated with individual job performance. We also provide evidence that formalization, decentralization, and structural differentiation moderate the effects of individual learning ambidexterity on individual job performance. The empirical context for the research was non-managerial employees from the Romanian IT services industry. Prior research has shown that ambidexterity is important in the IT industry, making it an adequate setting to analyze the effects of individual learning ambidexterity on individual job performance. By using polynomial regressions on a sample consisting of 342 employees, we were able to analyze four research hypotheses. This study demonstrates the moderating mechanism of organizational setting in the improvement of individual job performance in relation to individual learning ambidexterity. Taken as a whole, our findings provide new insights into how and under which organizational conditions the individual-level explorative and exploitative learning behaviors affect individual job performance.