Ambidextrous leadership and digitally enabled ambidextrous innovation behaviors: The role of employee-AI collaboration and AI-robotics awareness

As organizations accelerate digital transformation, understanding how to stimulate employees’ innovation behaviors becomes increasingly critical. Drawing on ambidexterity theory, this study develops and tests an integrated employee-AI collaboration, ambidextrous leadership, and AI and robotics awareness to employees’ digitally enabled ambidextrous innovation behaviors. The empirical data were obtained from 316 employees employed in Vietnamese high-technology enterprises using a three-wave time-lagged survey design, and the proposed relationships were subsequently examined through PLS-SEM analysis. The findings reveal that employee-AI collaboration positively influences digitally enabled exploratory innovation but has no significant effect on digitally enabled exploitative innovation. In addition, opening leadership positively affects digitally enabled exploitative innovation, whereas closing leadership positively influences digitally enabled exploratory innovation. Furthermore, AI and robotics awareness negatively moderates the relationship between employee-AI collaboration and digitally enabled exploratory innovation, while its moderating effect on digitally enabled exploitative innovation is not significant. This study extends the literature on employees’ ambidextrous innovation by uncovering the differentiated antecedents and boundary conditions of digitally enabled innovation behaviors. It also provides practical insights for organizations seeking to leverage employee-AI collaboration and ambidextrous leadership to strengthen employee innovation behaviors.