Abstract:

Organizations increasingly rely on innovation to achieve sustainable competitive advantage and ensure longer-run market performance. Ambidextrous innovation is a critical strategic framework that guides managers to channel their innovation into exploring new ideas for products, services, and processes and exploiting ideas for improving existing ones. However, achieving a desired level of ambidextrous innovation has always been a problem to be faced by managers. Further, it becomes even more difficult for project managers who are always defined by resource and time constraints to achieve ambidexterity in their projects. The present research has attempted to review the empirical research exploring ambidexterity in the project management context. The ambidexterity in project management is essential as it can be critical in project success and performance. The present research, employing a systematic literature review as a methodology, has collected empirical studies from SCOPUS and the Web of Science Database. The results of the present research study have revealed that ambidexterity can play an important role in enhancing project success and stakeholder satisfaction through exploring new ideas for project implementation and fine-tuning existing ones. Finally, the present research has revealed important antecedents of organizational culture in the context of ambidextrous innovation within the project management context. Research has revealed that organizational culture has an important role in being an enabler or an inhibitor of ambidexterity in project management. A culture that values new ideas can enable ambidextrous innovation in project settings. The research also offers an actionable direction to future researchers to develop the literature on ambidexterity in the project management context.