What are the human costs of ambidexterity? In this volume, the contributors examine how employees deal with following routines at the same time as they are expected to break them. They do this in a range of contexts including precarious work, online communities, management consultants, workers...

Organizations are under constant pressure to be ambidextrous. They must be able to exploit existing processes, routines and systems at the same time as they must engage in exploration through playfulness, relaxed control and experimentation. We know little about the human costs and challenges of...

In this introduction to the special issue we propose the main problems and issues that are addressed, namely, how the ambidextrous ideal in contemporary working life plays out at the individual level. Today, employees need to have the intellectual, social, and physical capacity, will, strength...