The role of ambidextrous leadership and employee ambidexterity in enhancing service quality of care and creativity – A study of health professionals

Background: It is important to understand how and in what ways a leadership style is capable to promote health professionals job performance. In this study we explore a relatively new leadership style, termed ambidextrous leadership. Ambidextrous leadership encompasses a leader capability to stimulate both exploitative and explorative activities in employees. Specifically, ambidextrous leadership is linked to two types of job-directed performance of health professionals’, respectively service quality of care and creativity. The study also examine what role employee ambidexterity seems to have in this relationship. Methods To test the conceptual model of this study, a cross-sectional survey was developed and data was gathered through convenience sampling of a total of N  = 258 health professionals in home care services across nine various municipalities based in Norway. The study tested and analyzed the proposed hypotheses of this study through structural equation modeling partial least square, with SmartPLS 3 software. In addition to testing the direct relationships, the study also examined the indirect relationship through mediation testing by bootstrap. Results Ambidextrous leadership were found to have a direct impact on both employee’s service quality (\(\beta\) = 0.236) of care and employee ambidexterity (\(\beta\) = 0.395). The direct relationship between ambidextrous leadership and employee creativity were insignificant. However, the relationship ambidextrous leadership and service quality of care and creativity were both mediated of employee ambidexterity. Finally, the results reveal that employee creativity mediated the relationship between employee ambidexterity and service quality of care. Conclusions Although there are some differences, both ambidextrous leadership and employee ambidexterity are capable to promote job-directed performance of health professionals. Thus, a practical implication on the basis of the findings is that healthcare organizations should recruit, train and develop their leaders to become ambidextrous leaders. Doing so will have a direct impact on level of service quality as well as employee ambidexterity. In addition, acquiring ambidextrous leadership practices will also positively transform employee ambidexterity in a positive direction and indirectly stimulate employee’s creativity as well as strengthening health professionals service quality of care offering. Consequently, health organizations should be conscious of the multiple direct- and indirect effects of practicing ambidextrous leadership.