Testing the Impact of Strategic Leadership on Organizational Ambidexterity : A Field Study on the Jordanian Chemical Manufacturing Companies

Organizations need to be ambidextrous to acquire new capabilities to be compatible with changing business environment and at the same time to employ its available capabilities to achieve the efficiency. The leadership contributes in building organizational ambidexterity through creating the context of ambidexterity. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify the impact of strategic leadership on the organizational ambidexterity of the (94) Jordanian chemical manufacturing companies operating at King Abdullah II Ibn Al-Hussein Industrial City. The sample of the study includes all the study population. The sampling unit and analysis (respondents) composed of the Chief Executive Officers (CEO) of all target companies. In order to achieve the study objectives, the researcher designed a questionnaire to collect the required data from study sample. To test the hypotheses the multiple regression analysis used. Empirical results indicated that the strategic leadership has a positive impact on organizational ambidexterity. Based on the results of the study, the strategic leader must be having the following skills: visioning, focusing, and implementing. In addition, researchers should conduct additional studies in strategic leadership and organizational ambidexterity in the different industries and contexts, especially in the service companies and taking other dimensions of strategic leadership rather than visioning, focusing, and implementing.


Introduction
The subject of organizational ambidexterity acquired the attention of scholars because the organizations need to be ambidextrous to achieve the balance between exploratory activities and exploitative activities simultaneously in order to acquire new capabilities to be compatible with changing business environment and at the same time employ its available capabilities to achieve the efficiency (Benner & Tushman, 2003).In addition, the small and medium companies needs the organizational ambidexterity because it is do not own resources like big companies to build separate units for exploratory and exploitative activities.and also small and medium-sized companies encounter greater challenges in managing tensions and contradictions related to the exploratory and exploitative activities and that increase its need for organizational ambidexterity (Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2010;Wulf, Trubner, & Blarr, 2010;Cao, Gedajlovic, & Zhang, 2009).
Leadership enables ambidexterity through providing obligatory strategic intent and creating a common vision and values for both exploitation and exploration activities, in addition to putting ambitious goals for both innovation and core business growth (O'Reilly & Tushman, 2011).
A strategic leader builds ambidextrous organizations through behaviors focused external to the organization as well as behaviors focused internal to the organization (Lin & McDonough, 2011).According to (Lin & McDonough, 2011) the significance of strategic leadership with regard to organizational ambidexterity is similar to the focus of organizational learning theory by merging external knowledge with current internal knowledge to avert organizational deadlock.Strategic leaders have a crucial role in recognizing opportunities and making decisions that influence ambidexterity and innovation processes (Drucker, 1985;Finkelstein & Hambrick, 1996;Quinn, 1985).From perspective of (Yukl, 1998) strategic leaders' opportunity recognition and exploitation add considerable business value.
Leaders who concentrate organizations on exploitation with no investment in exploration activities fall behind competitors who explore new innovative ways of doing business.Leaders must find a balance between exploration and exploitation activities for organizational survival and growth even though those activities compete for the same scarce resources.
Through reviewing the literature there is a lack in studies and researches that measured the direct impact of strategic leadership on organizational ambidexterity.Most of the previous studies focused on measuring the impact of top management and Chief Executive Officers behavior, characteristics, and attributes on organizational ambidexterity for example (Havermans,2015;Li, 2014;Mihalache et al, 2014;Buyl & Matthyssens, 2012;O'Reilly &Tushman, 2011;Qing, Zeki, & Hongping, 2010;Carmeli & Halevi, 2009;Jansen et al., 2008).In addition, Suzuki (2011) indicated that the organizational ambidexterity considered one of the prosperous research areas but there are some aspects related to it not fully understood until this moment, so it need more concern from the scholars and researchers.In order to enrich the literature this research aims to test the impact of strategic leadership on organizational ambidexterity in the Jordanian chemical manufacturing companies operating at king Abdullah II Ibn Al-Hussein Industrial City to answer the research main question: what is the impact of strategic leadership on organizational ambidexterity?.

Strategic Leadership
According to (Hambrick & Pettigrew, 2001) the theory of strategic leadership has evolved from the original upper echelons theory developed by Hambrick and Mason (1984) to study the instrumental ways in which the dominant coalition effects organizational outcomes and the symbolism and social construction of top executives.
Strategic leadership is a broader view of leadership.Strategic leadership describes the role of a leader beyond the interpersonal relationship between the leader and followers (Carter & Greer, 2013;Lin & McDonough, 2011).Transformational, transactional, and leader-member exchange leadership describes the effect leaders have on the performance of individuals within the organization based on personal interaction (Carter & Greer, 2013).Strategic leadership takes into consideration personal interaction and expands that to include the responsibility of the leader to create a vision that defines the desired meaning and purpose for the organization that is inclusive of the entire organization (Carter & Greer, 2013;Lin & McDonough, 2011).Strategic leadership considers the responsibility of the leader to set strategy and manage operations.Therefore, there is a distinction between the terms leadership and strategic leadership (Hambrick & Pettigrew, 2001).Leadership theory indicates to leaders at any level in the company, while strategic leadership theory indicates to the study of individuals at the top level of the company.In addition, leadership research focuses particularly on the relationship between leaders and followers.And this relationship has been examined from many perspectives (House & Aditya, 1997): trait and style approaches focus on leaders (Bryman, 1986;Stogdill, 1948); information-processing approaches and implicit theories of leadership focus on followers (Lord & Maher, 1991;Phillips & Lord, 1982); sociological approaches and substitutes for leadership models focus on contexts (Kerr & Jermier, 1978;Meindl, 1993); and contingency approaches, leader-member exchange theory, individualized leadership models, and social constructionist approaches (Fiedler, 1967;Graef, 1983;Graen & Scandura, 1987;Howell, Dorfman, & Kerr, 1986;Meindl, 1993) focus on the nature of interactions among leaders, followers, and contexts.In contrast to this micro focus, strategic leadership research focuses on executive work, not only as a relational activity but also as a strategic activity and a symbolic activity (Hambrick & Pettigrew, 2001).
There are numerous definitions for the concept of strategic leadership in the literature.Hitt, Ireland, and Hoskisson (2007) defined it as the ability to anticipate, envision, maintain flexibility, and empower others to create strategic change as necessary, so that the organization can have a viable future.While Amos (2007) described the strategic leadership as the ability to understand the entire organization and the environments within which they operate and using this understanding to create strategic change through other people so as to position the organization in the environment for both short-term stability and long-term viability.From point of view of (Montgomery, 2008) strategic leadership is the ability of the leaders to create and re-create reasons for the organization's continued existence.The leader must have the ability to respond to changes, both inside and outside the organization, that either threaten its position or present some new opportunity for adding value.
According to (Neumann & Neumann, 1999) strategic leadership style is the combination of three different individual skills and abilities: visioning, focusing, and implementing.Based on the work of (Neumann & Neumann, 1999) those skills had adopted in the current study as a dimensions of strategic leadership.

Visioning
visioning reflect the leader's ability to see the organization's future clearly and completely, and it include the desire to change the current situation, the tendency to adopt goals completely different from the existing goals, the ability to determine opportunities in the environment, and the formation of a long term growth path for their organizations.

Focusing
Focusing indicate to the leader's capability to move the organization from focus on the current situation to adopt the new vision, and it include the communication of the vision to others, the formulation of a strong guiding coalition, the focus on new priority areas and niches, and the establishment of the teams necessary for implementation process.

Implementing
Implementing describes the leader's ability to carry out the various goals and plans of the new vision and put strategic goals and plans into place.Implementing includes the ability to encourage employees on active participation in implementing plans, the ability to inspiration and motivation of employees to achieve high performance.Moreover implementing involves the ability to facilitate the process of recognition the new goals within short time through removing the obstacles that facing the implementation process.In addition to the ability to provide feedbacks at the right time for individuals and teams and units to work in harmony with identified vision, and setting the criteria of effective control on implementing the strategies and achieving the goals.

Organizational Ambidexterity
The concept of organizational ambidexterity was used for the first time by Duncan in 1976 to indicates to the ability of company to design dual structures that facilitate the application of innovation stages.March (1991) clarified that the organizational ambidexterity means striving at the same time to exploit existing resources and explore new capabilities, in other words reconciled between the processes that focus on exploit the company for its competitive position and exploration which focuses on new opportunities in the future; and he added that the both orientation considered as necessary to achieve success in the competitive environment that face companies.According to (Cegarra-Navarro & Dewhurst, 2007) ambidexterity is an organization's context to achieve alignment and adaptability simultaneously within the organization learning processes.While (Gupta, Smith, & Shalley, 2006) refers ambidexterity to the synchronous pursuit of both exploration and exploitation via loosely coupled and differentiated subunits or individuals, each of which specializes in either exploration or exploitation.Holmqvist (2004) suggested that ambidexterity might be one strategy through which certain organizations can manage exploitation and exploration.From perspective of (Simsek et al., 2009) ambidexterity refers to an organization's ability to perform differing and often competing, strategic acts at the same time.
There are numerous definitions for the concept of organizational ambidexterity in the literature.According to (Hill & Birkinshaw, 2012;O'Reilly & Tushman, 2013) organizational ambidexterity describes the ability of organizations to exhibit both exploration and exploitation behaviors.Gibson and Birkinshaw (2004) defined it as the organization ability to manage complex and contradictions components at the same time, like exploitation with exploration, efficiency with effectiveness, radical innovation with continuous innovation.While (He & Wong, 2004) described it as the organizations need to achieve the balance between exploitation and exploration to achieve superior performance.From perspective of (Menguc & Auh, 2004) organizational ambidexterity is a mix of exploitative and explorative abilities.Yigit (2013) clarified that the organizational ambidexterity reflects the organization ability to allocate resources to achieve success in explorative and exploitative activities.According to (Hill & Birkinshaw, 2012) organizational ambidexterity is a leader's ability to adjust the organization to remain competitive by being efficient at managing current demands while simultaneously being adaptive to changes occurring in the environment.He and Wong (2004) clarified that the organizational ambidexterity is the need for firms to achieve a balance between exploration and exploitation innovation strategies.
According to (Jansen et al., 2009) organizational ambidexterity is a dynamic capability referring to the routines and processes by which ambidextrous organizations mobilize, coordinate, and integrate dispersed contradictory efforts, and allocate, reallocate, combine, and recombine resources and assets across differentiated exploratory and exploitative units.Im & Rai (2008) described organizational ambidexterity as simultaneously pursuing innovation and short-term operational objectives in interorganizational relationships.Raisch and Birkinshaw (2008) defined organizational ambidexterity as an organization's ability to be aligned and efficient in its management of today's business demands while simultaneously being adaptive to changes in the environment.From perspective of (Taylor & Helfat, 2009) organizational ambidexterity is how firms can compete in both existing and new businesses, and simultaneously explore new businesses while exploiting existent ones.
From point of view of (Lubatkin et al., 2006) the ambidextrous company is that capable to exploit the existing competencies and explore new opportunities at equal level of dexterity.In contrast, Andriopoulos and Lewis (2010) clarified that the ambidextrous company is superior in exploit existing products to enable incremental innovation, and explore new opportunities to enhance radical innovation.
Based on the previous literature the exploration and exploitation had adopted in the current study as a dimensions of organizational ambidexterity.

Exploration
Exploration is organizational learning activities such as search, variation, risk taking, experimentation, and innovation (Hill & Birkinshaw, 2012).Exploration is defined as knowledge for search, novelty, experimentation, innovation, radical change and creation of new products, processes, and services (March, 1991(March, , 1999;;O'Reilly & Tushman, 2008).According to March (1991) exploration includes such things as search, variation, risk-taking, experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery, and innovation.From knowledge and learning perspectives, exploration can be defined as the pursuit of what might come to be known (Levinthal & March, 1993).As such, it often involves search processes that cross organizational and technological boundaries (Rosenkopf & Nerkar, 2001).Exploration allows organizations to create innovative new products, discover previously untapped markets, and develop new resources, capabilities, and competencies (Danneels, 2002;Geroski, Machin, & Van Reenen, 1993).Auh and Menguc (2005) suggest that exploration benefits organizations in the long run by increasing their effectiveness in terms of market share growth, sales growth, and new product introductions.

Exploitation
Exploitation is organizational learning activities such as refinement, efficiency, implementation, and execution (Hill & Birkinshaw, 2012).Exploitation is defined as knowledge for continuous improvement, modification, refinement, and incremental change of current products, processes, and services (March, 1991(March, , 1999;;O'Reilly & Tushman, 2008).According to March (1991) exploitation includes such things as refinement, choices, production, efficiency, selection, implementation and execution.Exploitation can be defined as the use and development of things already known (Levinthal & March, 1993).Specifically, exploitation benefits organizations by allowing them to develop their existing capabilities and take advantage of core competences in the short run (Danneels, 2002).

Study Hypothesis
The study mainly aimed to test the impact of strategic leadership on organizational ambidexterity.Therefore, the main hypothesis is: H0: There is no impact with statistical significant at (α ≤ 0.05) of strategic leadership on organizational ambidexterity.This hypothesis generates the following sub-hypotheses: H01: There is no impact with statistical significant at (α ≤ 0.05) of strategic leadership on exploration.H02: There is no impact with statistical significant at (α ≤ 0.05) of strategic leadership on exploitation.

Methodology
The study adopted the descriptive and field analytical methodology.In the descriptive methodology, the literature related to the strategic leadership and organizational ambidexterity was reviewed in order to build the theoretical framework of the study and developing the questionnaire.In the field analytical methodology, a field survey was conducted in order to collect the required data through the questionnaire distributed, and the statistical techniques such as (Mean, Standard Deviation, Variance Inflation Factory (VIF) Test, Tolerance Test, Skewness Test, and Multiple Regression) were used to describe and analyze the collected data and to test the study hypotheses.

Study Population and Sample
The study population consisted of (94) Jordanian chemical manufacturing companies operating at king Abdullah II Ibn Al-Hussein Industrial City.The study sample included all the study population.The sampling unit and analysis was all the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the target companies.Table (1) presents the characteristics of study sample in terms of their gender, years of experience in the company, educational level, and finally their age.

Study Instrument
The study instrument included a questionnaire developed by reference to the theoretical literature related to the strategic leadership and organizational ambidexterity.The questionnaire composed of three parts: The first part covers the demographic variables of the respondents, such as the gender, experience, educational level, and the age.The second part of the questionnaire includes the paragraphs related to the strategic leadership, which developed by the researcher based on (Neumann & Neumann, 1999) study.The third part of the questionnaire includes the paragraphs related to the organizational ambidexterity which include exploration that measured by ( 5) items and exploitation that measured by ( 6) items adopted from (Jansen et al., 2006).The answers to the second and third part of questionnaire relied on a Likert Scale, ranging from strongly disagree (1); disagree (2); moderately agree (3); I agree (4); and strongly agree (5).

Instrument Validity
The researcher offered the study instrument on a number of specialist academicians in the field of business administration, and research methodology, and according to their opinions; the language and words of questionnaire are clear.In addition, the questionnaire is adequate and fit to the present research.

Instrument's Reliability
The researcher determined the reliability of instrument by Cronbach alpha coefficients in order to ensure the internal consistency among questionnaire items.The alpha values was (0.84) for the strategic leadership and (0.88) for organizational ambidexterity items and (0.82) for the instrument as a whole.These values are excellent because it is higher than the acceptable value (60%) and it is acceptable for the purposes of this research.

Data Presentation
The means and standard deviations for the respondent's answers on the questionnaire items related to the strategic leadership and organizational ambidexterity introduced in the Table 2 and table 3.Where Table 2 presents the means and standard deviations for the respondent's answers on the questionnaire items related to the strategic leadership, while Table 3 presents the means and standard deviations for the respondent's answers on the questionnaire items related to the organizational ambidexterity.As shown in Table 2 the results indicate that the chief executive officers as strategic leaders in the Jordanian chemical manufacturing companies have a high visioning with average of means (3.95).And the paragraph (I work on formation a long-term growth path for the company) has the highest mean (4.25) while the paragraph (I have the tendency to adopt goals that fully different from the current situation) has the lowest mean (3.73) within visioning.In addition the results shown that the paragraph (I achieve continuous success in building suitable team works to implement the plans and programs of the company) has the highest mean (3.82) while the paragraph (I work on the re-organization of the work and the order of priorities to achieve the goals of the company) has the lowest mean (3.64) within focusing.And finally the results from table (2) shown that the paragraph (I work on carrying out the various goals and plans of the new vision) has the highest mean (4.12) while the paragraph (I work on inspiring and motivating the employees working with me in the implementation process through linking their goals with the organization goals) has the lowest mean (3.75) within implementing.

Average
As shown in Table 3 the results indicate that the Jordanian chemical manufacturing companies have a high exploitation activities level with average of means (3.90).Also the results from table (3) shown that the paragraph (We regularly implement small adaptations to existing products and services) has the highest mean (4.31) while the paragraph (We increase economies of scale in existing markets) has the lowest mean (3.63).

Hypotheses Testing
Before applying the regression analysis in order to testing the study hypothesis the researcher conducted the following tests to ensure the fitness of data for the regression analysis assumptions: Variance Inflation Factory (VIF) Test, and Tolerance Test to ensure there is no high correlation between the independent variables (Multicollinearity), and Skewness Test to ensure the normal distribution of the data.The results of these tests presented in Table 4.As shown in Table 6 the results indicate that the value of (F) is (1172.218)with significant (0.000) which is lower than the specified value (0.05) so the model is fit and acceptable.As shown in Table 7 the results of multiple regression analysis indicate that the strategic leadership affects the organizational ambidexterity.The values of beta and t-tests shown that the visioning, focusing, and implementing as a dimensions of strategic leadership has a positive impact on organizational ambidexterity at (α ≤ 0.05) and the highest impact for visioning, then implementing while the lowest impact for focusing.As shown in Table 8 the results of multiple regression analysis indicate that the strategic leadership affects the exploration activity.The values of beta and t-tests shown that the visioning, focusing, and implementing as a dimensions of strategic leadership has a positive impact on exploration activity at (α ≤ 0.05) and the highest impact for visioning, then implementing while the lowest impact for focusing.As shown in Table 9 the results of multiple regression analysis indicate that the strategic leadership affects the exploitation activity.The values of beta and t-tests shown that the visioning, focusing, and implementing as a dimensions of strategic leadership has a positive impact on exploitation activity at (α ≤ 0.05) and the highest impact for visioning, then implementing while the lowest impact for focusing.

Conclusion and Recommendations
The current study tested the impact of strategic leadership in terms of (visioning, focusing, and implementing) on achieving organizational ambidexterity.Empirical results found that the visioning, focusing, and implementing as a dimensions of strategic leadership has a positive impact on organizational ambidexterity and the highest impact for visioning then implementing while the lowest impact for focusing, these results reflects the important of strategic leaders to have a clear vision and be commit to the implementation process in order to achieve organizational ambidexterity that give their organizations the a superior performance and maintain their survival.
Based on these empirical results the research recommends that the Chief Executive Officers as strategic leaders must have the skills of visioning, focusing, and implementing and employ it in achieving organizational ambidexterity to maintain the survival and growth of their organizations.

Limitation and Future Researches
The current study and its results limited to the Jordanian chemical manufacturing companies, therefore there are a need for conducting more researches and studies on the subject of strategic leadership and organizational ambidexterity in the different industries and contexts, especially in the service companies.In addition, the current study measured the strategic leadership in terms of visioning, focusing, and implementing so there is a need to take another dimensions of strategic leadership.

Table 1 .
The characteristics of study sample (respondents)

Table 2 .
The means and standard deviations for the respondent's answers on the questionnaire items related to the strategic leadership

Table 3 .
The means and standard deviations for the respondent's answers on the questionnaire items related to the organizational ambidexterity

Table 4 .
The results of VIF, Tolerance, and Skewnes tests As shown in table (4) the results indicate that the values of (VIF) for all variables less than (10) and the values of (Tolerance) higher than (0.05) which mean there is no high correlation (Multicollinearity) between the independent variables.Also the results from table (4) shown that the values of Skewness less than (1) which means the normal distribution of the data.Based on these results the multiple linear regression analysis conducted to test the study hypothesis.Table (5)presents the model summary, and table (6) presents ANOVA analysis and tables (7, 8, and 9) presents beta and t values for the research hypothesizes.

Table 5 .
The Model Summary *Predictors: (Constant), Visioning, Focusing, Implementing.As shown in Table5the results indicate that the value of R square is (0.840) and this value means that the model explains (0.840) from the variance in the dependent variable (organizational ambidexterity) by strategic leadership.

Table 7 .
Beta and t values for the main study hypothesis **Dependent Variable: Organizational Ambidexterity.

Table 8 .
Beta and t values for the first sub hypothesis *Significant at the level of statistical significance (α ≤ 0.05).** Dependent Variable: Exploration.

Table 9 .
Beta and t values for the second sub hypothesis *Significant at the level of statistical significance (α ≤ 0.05).** Dependent Variable: Exploitation.