Abstract

This empirically examined the role of ambidextrous leadership on employees’ work engagement and organizational performance. Ambidextrous leadership encompasses a leader’s capability to stimulate exploitative and explorative activities in employees. A cross-sectional survey was developed, and data were gathered through convenience sampling of N=258 health professionals from government and private sector hospitals from main cities in Pakistan with a condition to have COVID emergency response centers in them so that pressure and crisis management experience must be there in the population of study. The study’s conceptual model was analyzed through structural equation modeling partial least squares with SmartPLS 3 software. Mediation by bootstrap was used to analyze the indirect relationships. Results Ambidextrous leadership was found to have a direct impact on both work engagement (β = 0.236) and organizational performance (β = 0.395). The direct relationship between ambidextrous leadership and employee creativity was nonsignificant. However, the relationships between ambidextrous leadership and work engagement and organizational performance were both mediated by High performance work systems. Finally, the results reveal that organizational performance mediated the relationship between high performance work system and work engagement.The results show that ambidextrous leadership and high performance work system promote the overall performance of health professionals. Thus, a practical implication is that health-care organizations should recruit, train, and develop their leaders to become ambidextrous leaders, in addition to being aware of the multiple direct and indirect effects of practicing ambidextrous leadership.