Abstract
As the microfoundations of organisational ambidexterity and performance, the individual ambidexterity of frontline employees has an ever-increasing demand to be learned. Drawing on a paradox lens on leadership, we propose a multilevel model of how and when supervisors’ paradoxical leadership enhance frontline employees’ ambidexterity. Combined with coordination mechanisms, this process should be intervened by connectedness and moderated by formalisation and centralisation. We conducted an online survey with a cross-sectional design. The data was composed of 429 responses from frontline employees in 23 firms in China, which were tested by hierarchical regression analysis. We found that paradoxical leadership has a positive direct impact on frontline employees’ ambidexterity and a positive indirect impact on it via connectedness. Formalisation significantly and positively moderates the impact of connectedness on individual ambidexterity, but centralisation does not significantly interact with connectedness. Both formalisation and centralisation play a nonsignificant impact on the indirect relationship.