Organisational ambidexterity and social enterprise performance: A Ghanaian perspective

South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Organisational ambidexterity and social enterprise performance: A Ghanaian perspective
 
Creator Oduro, Stephen Rami Hashem E, Alharthi Alsharif, Ahmed H.
 
Subject Strategy; business management; entrepreneurship organisational ambidexterity; social enterprise; social performance; economic performance; Ghana
Description Background: Despite the important role of social enterprises in addressing the gaps in social service and infrastructure provision by national governments, the organisational capabilities that make social enterprises competitive and effective are still under-researched in emerging economies.Aim: The purpose of the study is to extend the extant studies on the nexus between organisational ambidexterity and firm performance to the social enterprise context. More specifically, we draw on the Dynamic Capability Theory to investigate business-like social enterprises in Ghana and how organisational ambidexterity (i.e. exploitation and exploration) influences their social and economic performance.Setting: Organisational ambidexterity was tested on 317 randomly selected social enterprises in Ghana.Method: The study employed a quantitative research design via a survey questionnaire while the structural equation modelling technique in Analysis of a Moment Structure (AMOS) software was used to test the study’s hypotheses.Results: It was found, among other things, that both exploration and exploitation are positively and significantly related to social performance (social marketing achievement and social value creation) and economic performance (commercial marketing achievement and economic value creation) of social enterprises. That is, the simultaneous pursuit of exploitative and explorative initiatives does not decrease but increase social enterprise performance. These results defy the conventional wisdom that the trade-off between exploitative and explorative functions may decrease organisation efficiency and bring unnecessary costs.Conclusion: Organisational ambidexterity can be considered a cradle of strategic revitalisation and competitive advantage for social enterprises enhancing social and economic performance. Therefore, we suggest that social entrepreneurs should pursue exploitative and explorative ambidexterity simultaneously through appropriate structural ambidexterous mechanisms like structural separations or contextual ambidexterous mechanisms such as non-structural separations of units.
 
Publisher AOSIS Publishing
 
Contributor
Date 2022-11-25
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Survey
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajems.v25i1.4635
 
Source South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences; Vol 25, No 1 (2022); 13 pages 2222-3436 1015-8812
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://sajems.org/index.php/sajems/article/view/4635/2636 https://sajems.org/index.php/sajems/article/view/4635/2637 https://sajems.org/index.php/sajems/article/view/4635/2638 https://sajems.org/index.php/sajems/article/view/4635/2639
 
Coverage Africa 2022 Gender; Age; occupation
Rights Copyright (c) 2022 Stephen Oduro, Alharthi Rami Hashem E, Ahmed H. Alsharif https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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