Multilevel integration of exploration units: Beyond the ambidextrous organization

This paper addresses the integration mechanisms settled in large multidivisional organizations in order to combine incremental and radical innovations. Recent work emphasizes that in order to maintain its competitive advantage, a firm should be able to balance exploration and exploitation. But few works analyze how firms do it. We developed an in-depth case study. The company we studied, a large multidivisional automotive supplier, wanted to enhance its growth through innovation and so created a unit dedicated to the development of radical innovations. Taking an ethnographic approach we outlined the tensions that developed between this exploratory entity and the other divisions and focused on the integration mechanisms through which the firm outcomes these tensions. We suggest that integration takes place on a multilevel basis: the top management that appoint and support the leader of the exploratory unit, the leader that develop formal and informal interactions with the divisions' senior executives, the divisions' VPs and senior executives and the middle level managers that are in the divisions and that participate in the projects of the exploration entity. Our analysis shows four types of integration mechanisms: permanent cross-divisional working groups, ad hoc cross-divisional committee meetings, assigning transversal subjects to a high status actor and the initiatives of key individuals working both for the entity and a division.