Managing Organizational Identity Through Ambidextrous Capabilities: A Dual Level Analysis

Organizations need to maintain enduring and stable organizational identity to gain long-term success while must adapt quickly to the increasingly volatile environment as a critical condition for profitability and survival. Such ongoing paradoxical challenge concerning management of organizational identity has been left unaddressed in the existing literature. Drawing on the ambidexterity and organizational identity literatures, this paper proposes two theoretical frameworks to systematically examine how organizations especially in the e-commerce industry should manage their organizational identities by leveraging on four types of balancing modes of ambidexterity. The case of Damai, which is China’s No.1 online ticket seller, was comprehensively analyzed on the basis of these two models. Our study not only contributes to knowledge of organizational identity and ambidexterity but also provides detailed means for practitioners to manage organizational identities at both strategic and operational levels.