Leading ambidexterity

Health insurers in The Netherlands are becoming more powerful and more demanding towards healthcare organizations. Therefore, healthcare organizations are expected to work as efficient as possible, but also to be constantly innovating (Adler et al., 2003). How these organizations manage to do so, is still unknown. In order to investigate these developments, the concepts of collaboration and organizational ambidexterity were used. So far, it is only known from studies that there is a connection between management and collaboration and between collaboration and ambidexterity, but not how it exactly works out in practice (Adler & Heckscher, 2013; Carmeli & Halevi, 2009; Ghoshal & Bartlett, 1994). On the basis of a qualitative study at a Dutch hospital, this study examines what managers do to create collaboration within the hospital and how collaboration can lead to organizational ambidexterity on its turn. However, collaboration and organizational ambidexterity as two static concepts are being challenged by the narratives of the respondents. They describe the concepts more as ongoing processes. For accomplishing organizational ambidexterity, collaboration or collaborative communities have to be created. In order to do so, healthcare organizations need to loosen the interdepartmental boundaries and they need professionals in the lead. A way to do this is by creating dual management within organizations in which professionals and managers collaborate and integrate their knowledge and by creating multidisciplinary teams around patients with a specific medical condition.