Abstract:It has been found that the supportive effect of leaders in the process of organizational learning has been emphasized,and the direct influence of his or her personal learning on the effectiveness of organizational learning has been neglected in literatures.Therefore,in order to reveal this influential mechanism,we suppose that a leader selects the learning behaviors,either exploration or exploitation,according to the characteristics of organizational learning context,and adjusts the direction of internal knowledge flows,hierarchical or horizontal,to enhance the effectiveness of organizational learning at organizational level by achieving ambidexterity between these two learning behaviors at the individual level of the leader.Results from agent-based sim_x005fulation show that when in weak learning context,the leader should facilitate vertical knowledge flows with subordinates through exploration learning and horizontal knowledge flows with other leaders through exploitation learning; when in strong learning context,the leader should facilitate both vertical knowledge flows with subordinates and horizontal knowledge flows with other leaders through exploration learning.