Paper presented by Danilo C. Dantas, Professor of Marketing at HEC Montréal and DMAQ member, with Saulo D. Barbosa (EMLYON Business School) and Giovany Cajaiba-Santana (KEDGE Business School) at the AIMAC General Conference 2015.
Abstract
We set to study ambidexterity effects on individual and group performance across institutional fields with distinct degrees of maturity. Musicians and music groups provide a rich and so far under-researched context for the study of ambidexterity effects in cultural entrepreneurship. We carried out a survey with professional musicians from Canada. Our results suggest that musicians do not really benefit from ambidexterity. They seem to be better-off focusing on a single strategic emphasis. The effect of such strategic emphasis, however, is contingent upon the institutional field represented by the music genre in which they are embedded. Our results suggest that in the field of classical music, musicians benefit from market exploration, i.e., trying to reach out and attract new audiences to their concerts. In other fields, musicians benefit more from product exploitation, i.e., sticking to their core competencies and repertoires.
