The impact of CEO Core Self Evaluation on firm's ambidexterity orientation.

One of the central debates in organizational theory and strategic management field has concentrated on the role of CEO personality (Astley & Van de Ven, 1983) affecting strategic decisions and company performances. On one hand, the population ecology and resource dependence perspectives hold that organizational outcomes are mostly determined by environmental and inertial factors, leaving almost no room for managerial action and decision making (Hannan & Freeman, 1977). On the other hand, the strategic choice perspective argues that strategic decision making plays a role in determining organizational outcomes (Child, 1972). Following this approach, a step ahead has been taken putting the attention on the role of CEO personality influencing the strategic decision making activity and organizational behavior. This circumstance has opened an important stream of research involving different disciplines, such as psychology, which previously appeared a step away from strategic management research. This study aims at following this approach since, along the upper echelons theory, many studies have demonstrated that CEO personality strongly influences a variety of variables, belonging to strategic decisions, organizational processes as well as company performances. Along this stream of research, Core Self Evaluation is one of the most investigated construct referring to CEO personality. Hambrick (2007) has positively linked CEO core self evaluation to firm decisions and outcomes. Furthermore, high levels of core self evaluation positively influence the firm’s entrepreneurial orientation and innovation attitude (Simsek, Heavey & Veiga, 2010). Thanks to their prominence in the organization, CEOs strongly affect the strategic decision making process (Simsek, Heavey & Veiga, 2010). CEOs with high levels of core self evaluation are more optimistic and prompt to change as well as to take strategic decisions which differ from previous ones (Hambrick, 2007). In Literature Ambidexterity is defined “the ability of a firm to exploit its current business while exploring new territory, in terms of new technologies, markets, products or business models”. It is deemed a critical source of competitive success (Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000; March, 1991; Thompson, 1967; Tushman and O’Reilly, 1996; Quinn and Cameron, 1988.) The need to achieve a “balance” between exploitation and exploration has been proposed in a wide range of management areas, including organization theory (e.g. Holmqvist, 2004), managerial economics (e.g. Ghemawat and Costa, 1993), international business (e.g. Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1989) and strategic management (e.g. Winter and Szulanski, 2001). Following the upper echelons theory stream of research (Hambrick and Mason, 1984), many studies have focused on the analysis of potential impacts of CEO Personality on strategic decisions as well as on organizational behavior, but no systematic approach has been applied regarding the influence of CEO Core Self Evaluation on firm’s Ambidexterity orientation. Moreover, despite many studies have tried to explain the role of antecedent to determine organizational ambidexterity, both from a dispositional and from a contextual perspective, no systematic analysis has been made regarding the role of CEO personality in affecting an ambidextrous behavior of the organization (Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004). All this premised, the aim of this study will be to disclose a positive influence of CEO Core Self Evaluation on firm’s ambidexterity orientation. Therefore, this analysis may open a significant stream of research, since it may help to disentangle a subtle but massive impact of a CEO personality trait on organizational behavior.