Can empowering leadership teams improve how public organizations explore and exploit opportunities?

Abstract

Public organizations must innovate and optimize simultaneously—a balance called ambidexterity. A study of 85 Swedish municipal housing corporations finds that shared leadership in top management teams enhances this capacity, especially when combined with performance-oriented control systems. This Spotlight article is a research summary of an original study by Timurs Umans, Elin Smith, William Andersson and William Planken, published in Int. Review of Administrative Sciences in 2020.