Abstract
Ambidexterity is an essential concept not only for managing organization but for individual employees as well. Particularly, firms nowadays anticipate their frontline employees to take on sales responsibility while delivering service to their customers, which well exemplify the concept of ambidexterity at the individual level. In collaborating with a logistic company in Taiwan that launched a program to promote ambidextrous behaviors at their customer contact employees, this study aims to examine three issues. First, whether proactive traits and meaning-making of the innovation predict ambidexterity? Second, whether the goal orientation and team support moderate the influence of individual characteristics? Third, does ambidexterity influence the employees’ performance? To address these issues, this study surveyed 303 frontline employees and 37 branch managers together with the employees sales performance data from the case company. The results show positive effects of proactive personality, change-related self-efficacy, and meaning-making on ambidextrous behavior; however the relation between these independent variables and ambidextrous behavior are not moderated by team support and the goal orientation of the branch managers. Surprisingly, no significant relations were found between employees’ ambidextrous behavior and their performance.