The exploration and exploitation of innovation activities proposed by March(1991) have evolved into the concept of organizational ambidexterity and have become an important means to secure sustainable competitiveness of the organization. However, introducing and promoting innovation activities does not mean that all organization generate results. In this study, it was assumed that the introduction of innovation did not directly show the performance of the organization and the individual, but, "ways of doing things“, a tool for executing innovation activities mediates these relationships. As a concrete parameter, we define the organizational level "ways of doing things" as four cyclical steps of KPI selection, task implementation, task check, performance evaluation and feedback. The effects of these components on the individual level dependent variables such as job satisfaction, job performance, and goal achievement were analyzed through the multivariate multilevel model(2-2-1), taking into account organizational ambidexterity. In addition, by "Management Fashion Theory" of Abrahamson(1996), the organization is forced to introduce new and more effective innovation activities repeatedly and continuously, which leads employees to feel the innovation fatigue. In this study, we propose a measure to improve the organizational effectiveness of innovation activities by measuring the "innovation fatigue" felt by individuals and analyzing the relationship between organizational level innovation activity, ways of doing things and individual performance.
In this study, we conducted an empirical analysis using Amos 21 and SPSS 21 based on the responses of 566 respondents in a total of 108 organization ranging from large enterprises to SMEs for multi level analysis. The results of the analysis are summarized as follows.
First, in the relationship of innovation activities at the organizational level and performance variables at the individual level, ie, job satisfaction, job performance, and goal achievement, each activity of exploration and exploitation has a partial mediation effect, organizational ambidexterity variable was found to have a full mediation effect. The organizational ambidexterity variable used the difference, the product, and the sum of exploitation activity and exploration activity. The organizational ambidexterity variables, sum and product variables, were found to have a greater effect on dependent variables than the single exploration or exploitation activities. The difference variable of the two activities was weak or negative, And the effect of sum and product variables on the dependent variables was reversed. The organizational ambidexterity variables have a greater effect on job performance than individual job satisfaction, and ICC(1) is about 10% higher.
Second, innovation fatigue has a negative effect on the relationship between innovation activities and dependent variables and on the relationship between ways of doing things and dependent variables. In addition, there is no moderating effect on the relation between innovation activity and ways of doing things at the same organizational level, but it has a negative effect on ways of doing things. Therefore, Organizations with a high degree of innovation fatigue tend to have less individual performance than those with a low degree of innovation fatigue. But in a high-level ambidexterity organization, individual performance is higher than that of the low innovation fatigue, even though repeated, continuous innovations increase innovation fatigue.
Third, it is significant that there is a difference in ways of dong things depending on the size of companies. The smaller the firm size, the lower the level of ways of doing things and the lower the individual''s performance.
Fourth, the age and education level at the individual level showed a positive (+) effect on the dependent variable, job performance, job satisfaction, and goal achievement.
Fifth, Job satisfaction, job performance, and goal achievement at the level of individual performance were analyzed to be much more correlated with organizational level than individual level. When multiple dependent variables were measured using the same questionnaire, it was confirmed that multivariate analysis taking into account the correlation could lead to accurate results.
As presented in the previous research results and the results of this study, it is suggested that organizational ambidexterity in a balanced and high level is very important for sustainable competitive advantage, which promotes exploitation activities for securing today’s competitiveness and exploration activities for securing tomorrow''s competitiveness. In this process, ways of doing things are analyzed as an important factor that can explain much the variance of the performance indicating the difference of the organization level. Therefore, it is necessary to check the current ways of doing things and to rebuild those for the performance of the organization. As ways of doing things continue, those influence individual''s thinking and behavior, become routinized and results, and when all the members repeatedly execute, those develop into organizational culture. Just as bundling practices are more effective in high performance work systems, these four activities have been found to be cyclical and complementary. Especially, the difference in ways of doing things according to the size of enterprises is significant, and SMEs need to improve their ways of doing things in order to improve their organizational performance. The main cause of this difference has been proven to be a difference in exploration and exploitation of innovation activities. In addition, the innovation fatigue caused by repeated and continuous innovation activities is an important parameter to be considered in promoting innovation activities and it is necessary to take measures to reduce organizational performance. In this study, we presented five measures to reduce the innovation fatigue of the causes derived from statistical analysis. This is performance evaluation and feedback in ways of doing things, which has the greatest negative impact on innovation fatigue. The result was that the evaluation was carried out immediately in a timely and fair manner, and the reasonable compensation was made according to the result, the innovation fatigue was reduced. On the contrary, the item that had the greatest positive influence on innovation fatigue was "stressed by the innovation goal too high", suggesting that it is necessary to change the innovation goal setting and evaluation method. In addition, as age and education level have a significant effect on the performance variable, the organization hastily establishes various measures such as education and training to improve the performance of individuals with low age employees and low education employees.