The ambidextrous employee : exploiting and exploring people's potential / Mikael Holmqvist, André Spicer -- Making, breaking and following rules : the Irvine case / Donncha Kavanagh -- In pursuit of the ambidextrous graduate : potentiality between exploration and exploitation / Bogdan Costea, Kostas Amiridis, Norman Crump -- By hook or by crook : flexible workers between exploration and exploitation / Silvia Gherardi, Annalisa Murgia -- 'Some might call it work ... but we don't' : exploitation and the emergence of free work / Peter Fleming -- March meets Marx : the politics of exploitation and exploration in the management of life and labour / Christian Maravelias, Torkild Thanem, Mikael Holmqvist -- Coordination and learning in Wikipedia : revisiting the dynamics of exploitation and exploration / Aleksi Aaltonen, Jannis Kallinikos -- Workload, aspiration, and fun : problems of balancing self-exploitation and self-exploration in work life / Sara Louise Muhr, Michael Pedersen, Mats Alvesson -- Outsourcing your life : exploitation and exploration in the '4-hour workweek' / Jana Costas, Christopher Grey -- Exploitation, exploration and exaltation : notes on a metaphysical (re)turn to 'one best way of organizing' / Paul Du Gay, Signe Vikkelsø.

Organizations are under constant pressure to be ambidextrous. They must be able to exploit existing processes, routines and systems at the same time as they must engage in exploration through playfulness, relaxed control and experimentation. We know little about the human costs and challenges of ambidexterity. In this volume we explore the impact of ambidextrous organizations on individuals' working lives. The authors analyze how employees are required to follow routines at the same time as they are expected to break these routines. They also explore how the individual dilemmas of ambidexterity play out in the lives of precarious work, online communities, management consultants, workers in the automotive industry, and consumers of pop-management books in the US. The result is a rich and fascinating picture of individuals whose working lives are made up of a continued tension between the quest to be exploitative and explorative.

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