Strategic renewal through multilevel balancing

International audienceExtant strategy research shows that innovative business units are often structurally separated from the parent organization in order to facilitate the development of new capabilities. This paper constitutes a process study of the separation and subsequent re-integration of a business unit. We draw on a longitudinal study of Immochan (2006 – 2014) in order to develop a model of strategic renewal through, what we call, multilevel balancing. We identify three balancing mechanisms on the micro, meso and macro level, which enable change in routines, capabilities and organization structures. Our findings contribute to the ambidexterity literature in three ways as well as research on strategy practice and process