Ambidexterity in Product Innovation Management: An Investigation of Its Performance Consequence

Description

While an ambidextrous approach of exploration and exploitation has been suggested to improve firm performance, its main effect and theoretical boundaries have yet to be fully explored. This study extends the resource-based view by considering ambidexterity as a complex and contingent construct, which can have a non-linear effect on firm performance and is also subject to environmental and organizational moderating conditions. In particular, the researchers argue that a U-shaped relationship between ambidexterity in product innovation and firm performance will be moderated by variables at different levels. The researchers contend that ambidexterity will improve firm performance under a high level of environmental effect uncertainty, organizational slack, and informal coordination, while it reduces performance in a highly challenging performance context, where discipline and stretch are the organizational norm. They will empirically investigate the above relationships using high-tech firms in China.