Exploring the role of exploration/exploitation and strategic leadership in organizational learning

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of exploration/exploitation strategies in organizational learning and the impact of strategic leadership on the organizational learning process. Design/methodology/approach: Based on an extensive review of literature, this paper develops propositions encompassing three key elements: exploration/exploitation, strategic leadership and organizational learning. Findings: The propositions inform that tension between exploration and exploitation creates opportunities for organizational learning. Further, leadership styles have a differential effect on the role of exploration/exploitation in organizational learning. Transformational leadership positively impacts the role of exploration in individual and group learning but negatively impacts the role of exploitation in institutionalized learning. Transactional leadership positively impacts the role of exploitation in institutionalized learning but negatively impacts the role of exploration in individual and group learning. The alternate use of transformational and transactional leadership styles can facilitate multilevel organizational learning. Research limitations/implications: The propositions are the first step toward the development of a theory of exploration/exploitation–organizational learning–strategic leadership. For practitioners, this paper elaborates the role of exploration/exploitation and strategic leadership in multilevel organizational learning. The paper also informs about those leadership styles that are counterproductive in the individual/group and institutionalized learning. Originality/value: This paper is novel in its contribution because exploration/exploitation, organizational learning and strategic leadership have not been discussed in a unified framework in the previous studies. Further, whereas previous studies discuss “organizational learning” mainly as an organizational-level construct, this paper discusses organizational learning at the individual, group and organizational levels. A discussion of the individual, group and institutionalized learning furnishes rich insights into organizational learning dynamics.