Ambidexterity and Evidence-Based Management Practice: Cases from Major League Baseball (MLB)

The emergence of organizational ambidexterity (i.e., finding the balance between core competencies and innovation) is an important topic not only to management researchers, but also to practitioners and coaches in organizational development practice. Traditionally, ambidexterity has been studied at organizational levels of analysis, most predominantly in high technology settings. However, there is a need to understand how ambidexterity is informed in day-to-day management, decision-making, and evidenced-based management (EBM) practice in other contexts. In this teaching session, we begin to tackle these issues by examining how ambidexterity challenges can be informed by EBM through cases from professional baseball, where decision-making traps may run the organization afoul. Furthermore, the utilization of predictive analytics in this sport have been well-established and often used for exploitative and explorative purposes. We conclude this session by illustrating how these cases can be linked to other organizational contexts and made useful for managers and organizational development practitioners.