Amoeba management and organizational ambidexterity: Similarities, differences, and implications for organizational fit and success

The purpose of this paper is to extensively discuss the performance management system characteristics of amoeba management and organizational ambidexterity to provide conceptual comparisons between the two and assist scholars and practitioners in their respective research design and adoption decisions.

Management databases that included Science Direct, ABI/INFORM Global, Business Source Premier and Scopus (and their Japanese counterparts), as well as a number of journals known for publishing work on amoeba management and organizational ambidexterity, were used to identify relevant published work. An initial identification of almost 2,500 books and articles was reduced to the paper’s approximately 100 references. Feedback from presenting the paper at management conferences and university seminars supports the comprehensiveness of the assembled literature.

This paper shows that prior research’s conflating of amoeba management and organizational ambidexterity is misguided. While the two performance management systems share a common overarching philosophy on how to successfully operate in highly competitive environments and adopt a similar urgency about the need for business units to feature relatively small numbers of employees, significant differences involving the enactment of strategy, organizational structure, organizational culture, planning horizon, performance measures, employee involvement, employee selection and leadership prevail.

By providing scholars and practitioners with better, more holistic understandings of amoeba management and organizational ambidexterity, the paper seeks to advance theoretical and practical understandings of the two performance management systems. The model provided helps scholars incorporate into their research more complete theoretical constructions and operational representations of these two performance management systems and helps practitioners make better informed adoption choices.