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The Effect Of Smes’ Organizational Ambidexterity On Performance

Posted on:2015-03-09Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y ChenFull Text:PDF
GTID:1109330467950862Subject:Business management
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SMEs(Small and Medium-sized Enterprises)have played an important role in the industry evolution and national economy. However, due to the lack of resources, fomal management process and external legitimacy, the development of SMEs has its own limits. Although previous researches have paied attention to the role of knowledge and organizational learning of SMEs in obtaining competitive advantage, the unique context of transional economies such as China has provided learning dilemma to its SMEs. The late-comer’s technology catch-up context and the discontinuous, multi-layered market characteristics have raised the question "Should SMEs explore new knowledge or exploit its current knowledge". In order to resolve this conundrum, researches in organizational ambidexterity field have put forword structural separation, context designing, leadership and network as the mechanisms by which firms could realize ambidexterity. Nevertheless, SMEs have its own features, which indicate SMEs could not realize organization ambidexterity by the mechanisms above or could not realize ambidexterity at a low cost.Based on this research gap, this dissertation focuses on how SMEs organization ambidexterity influences its performance. Specifically, this research aims at exploring three questions:(1) How SMEs specialization, within domain ambidexterity and cross domain ambidexterity affect its performance;(2) How envirionmental dynamism moderates the relationship between SMEs specialization, within domain ambidexterity, cross-domain ambidexterity and performance;(3) How Inter-functional coordination moderates the relationship between SMEs specialization, within domain ambidexterity, cross domain ambidexterity and performance.Aiming at answering these questions, this research combines theoretical and empirical research methods. Firstly, through the logic analysis and theory derivation, we put forward the concept of cross domain ambidexterity. Then, data has been collected by a survey, and EFA and CFA have been used to testify the reliability and validity. Finally, the hierarchical regression results indicate the conclusions below:(1) SMEs specialization, within domain ambidexterity and cross-domain ambidexterity affect performance in different ways. SMEs specialization and cross-domain ambidexterity is positively related with performance. While within market domain ambidexterity has a negative effect on performance, within technology domain ambidexterity does not have a significant effect on performance.(2) Environmental dynamism significantly moderates the relationship between SMEs specialization, within domain ambidexterity, cross-domain ambidexterity and performance. Specifically, environmental dynamism negatively moderates the relationship between "pure exploitation" and performance. Besides, when the environmental dynamism is high, the negative relationship between within market domain ambidexterity and performance will be lower. Moreover, although the cross-domain ambidexterity has a positive effect on performance, when environmental dynamisn is high, this positive effect will be lower.(3) Inter-functional coordination significantly moderates the relationship between SMEs specialization, within domain ambidexterity, cross-domain ambidexterity and performance. Specifically, Inter-functional coordination positively moderates the relationship between "pure exploration" and performance. Similarly, Inter-functional coordination positively moderates the relationship between within domain and cross-domain ambidexterity and performance.The above research findings could deepen our understanding the relationship between SMEs organization ambidexterity and their performance. The main contributions of this research are as follows:Firstly, previous researches have put forward structural separation, context designing, leadership and network as the mechanisms of balancing the exploration and exploitation. By proposing the cross-domain ambidexterity, this research provides a new way of balancing expoloration and exploitation, which could enrich the meaning of ambidexterity and provide guidances in management practices.Secondly, this study has empirically compared the effect of SMEs specialization, within domain ambidexterity and cross-domain ambidexterity on performance. The research findings not only answer the question of whether organizational ambidexterity would benefit the SMEs, but also extend the theoretical boundary of organizational ambidexterity to some extent.Finally, this study has identified and empirically verified the contingent attributes of the relationship between SMEs specialization, within domain ambidexterity and cross-domain ambidexterity and performance by introducing the environemental dynamism and inter-functional coordination, which could help us deepen our understanding of the above three strategies of SMEs.
Keywords/Search Tags:SMEs, organizational ambidexterity, cross-domain ambidexterity, environmental dynamism, inter-functional coordination
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