Leadership Styles, Leadership Behaviours and the Management of Ambidexterity across Organisational Boundaries in Nigerian Pharmaceutical Companies

Nwabunike, Linda Onyinye Nnenna (2024) Leadership Styles, Leadership Behaviours and the Management of Ambidexterity across Organisational Boundaries in Nigerian Pharmaceutical Companies. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates innovation management within the Nigerian pharmaceutical sector through the lens of ambidexterity, focusing on the leadership behaviours and styles that facilitate exploration and exploitation, as well as the dynamics involved in equity alliances for innovation projects. While previous quantitative studies suggest that equity ties with government entities can negatively affect an organisation's ambidextrous strategies, contrasting findings from China indicate a positive influence of social ties with the government on innovation ambidexterity. However, these findings are not directly transferable to the African context due to distinct political and cultural differences. Furthermore, existing research on innovation ambidexterity, particularly within African contexts, is sparse and predominantly quantitative, with a limited focus on diverse leadership styles beyond transformational and transactional leadership. This study develops a comprehensive conceptual framework to explore the interplay between equity ties, social capital, and innovation ambidexterity, highlighting the moderating role of structural separation and how different dimensions of social capital and equity ties reinforce each other. Employing an embedded multiple case study methodology, the research examines five Nigerian pharmaceutical firms through the philosophical lens of pragmatism. Thirty-two semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted, and the data was analysed using template and matrix analysis for cross-case comparisons. The findings reveal that equity alliances for both exploration and exploitation benefit from structural separation to minimise external interference in the focal firm's innovation strategy. Trust emerges as a crucial prerequisite for forming equity alliances, and in turn, equity ties enhance access to individuals and information across organisational levels. Moreover, partnerships with reputable entities, such as the government, were found to boost the focal company's public reputation significantly. The study also demonstrates that a combination of transformational, strategic, directive, transactional, shared, and collective leadership styles promotes innovation ambidexterity. A CEO with strategic and transformational leadership qualities who distributes or shares resource allocation and decision-making power with other top managers is more likely to cultivate the leadership behaviours and styles necessary for innovation ambidexterity. Transformational leadership, in particular, was found to simultaneously support both exploitation and exploration more than other leadership styles. The research offers significant implications to the literature, suggesting that leadership for ambidexterity may be the responsibility of multiple leaders working collaboratively rather than a single leader balancing leadership styles for exploration and exploitation. The innovation leadership behaviour model developed in this thesis links specific leadership behaviours to different types of innovation (exploration and exploitation) and stages (ideation and implementation), providing a unified framework for future research. Despite its contributions, the study acknowledges limitations related to the reliance on qualitative methods, including potential biases such as sample size constraints, interpreter bias, and the influence of context-specific factors. The use of non-probability sampling and theoretical replication in case selection further limits the generalisability of the findings beyond the specific context of the Nigerian pharmaceutical sector, particularly within the South-West region. Further research is recommended to test the broader applicability of these results to other regions, countries and industries.