Individual ambidexterity and management controls: a systematic literature review

Abstract According to Merchant and Van der Stede (Management control systems: performance measurement, evaluation and incentives, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, 2012), top managers use management controls in order to increase the likelihood that employees act in the best interest of the organization. Nowadays, more and more companies expect their employees to perform well on exploitation and exploration at the same time. This is referred to as individual ambidexterity (e.g., Mom et al. in J Manag 45:3009–3034, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206318776775 ). Due to the increasing importance of the topic, the main purpose of the present article is to review findings from top tier management journals and to summarize implications for result, action, and personnel/cultural controls. We apply a structured approach to detect the most relevant studies for our examination and search for ambidexterity and ambidextrous in title, abstract, and keywords. The final sample consists of 56 articles published in top tier management journals including all subfields. In the first step, we provide an overview of both methods and theories used to study individual ambidexterity. In a second step, we summarize and analyze the insights on how organizations can use results, action, and personnel/cultural controls to enable individuals to achieve higher ambidextrous performance. In the final step, we highlight directions for future research and hope to motivate more research from scholars of the management accounting field to address this topic of relevance.