Complementing the promising stream of literature that conceptualises ambidexterity as a paradox and mostly focuses on the individual level, we aim to investigate the organisational level and explore how organisations intertwine exploration and exploitation in practice over time. To this end, we adopt a practice-based approach, which we apply to the in-depth study of the paradigmatic case of Maison Pierre Hermé in the high-end pastry sector. Our findings reveal six versatile organisational practices (codifying, sourcing, testing, visualising, sharing meaning and reinterpreting) that serve both exploration and exploitation. We also show that these practices are intertwined and contribute to organisational ambidexterity as a whole, allowing us to develop a novel framework that complements the still emerging paradoxical and dynamic perspective of ambidexterity. We thus contribute to establishing ambidexterity as a multi-level phenomenon involving not only individual cognition and behaviour, but also organisational practices.
