The Antecedents Of Knowledge Search Ambidexterity And Its Impact On Innovation Performance

Knowledge search at firm level is an attractive issue in organizational learning and technological innovation. After the introduction of organizational ambidexterity, some scholars start to use this perspective and paradigm in the field of knowledge search. However, the research on ambidextrous knowledge search focuses on exploitative search and explorative search, lacking in other types of ambidexterity. At the same time, some studies usually confuse exploitative-explorative search with local-distant search, leaving ambiguity between these two sets of concepts. Besides, most of the previous research study local search and distant search from single boundary, raising the need of comparison between different boundaries. As a result, this dissertation focuses on the ambidexterity of local search and distant search from organizational and technological boundaries. There exist three shortcomings in the study of organizational ambidexterity, including that in knowledge search:1) The studies of antecedents mainly discuss internal contexts, organizational structures and top management teams, only limited research discuss the effects of organizational slack and capability; 2) Although most prior studies confirm the positive effect of organizational ambidexterity on firms'performance, some studies hold opposite view and verify that sequential replacement has better performance effect. Hence, the answer to "whether or not organizational ambidexterity will increase firms' performance" still has mixed findings and limitations, and more research is needed; 3) Firms are embedded in business environment and affected by environment in the process of decision-making, as well as operating. The outside business environment of firms, including dynamism and threat, is of great complexity, and its effect is contingent in the process of decision-making and operating. So, this dissertation is divided into three sub-research, analyzing antecedents and performance effect of ambidextrous local-distant search from organizational and technological boundaries with secondary data from manufacturing firms listed in the stock market of the USA.Research 1 holds the perspective of firms'capability, focusing on the effects of firms'absorptive capacity and its interaction with environment on the propensity of ambidextrous knowledge search. As resource-based view and transaction cost theory have competing explanations, this research comes up with three pairs of competitive hypothesis. After conducting empirical study, resource-based view is verified to have greater power on explaining this question. The specific conclusion of this research is: 1) Firms with greater absorptive capacity tends to search ambidextrously at organizational boundary, but the level of absorptive capacity doesn't have significant effect on ambidextrous search at technological boundary.2) With the increase of environmental dynamism, the tendency of ambidextrous search at organizational boundary rises along with firms' absorptive capacity, instead of at technological boundary.3) With the increase of environmental threat, the tendency of ambidextrous search at organizational boundary of firms with greater absorptive capacity will be weakened, but the tendency at technological boundary will not be significantly affected.Research 2 starts from the perspective of organizational resource, discussing the effects of organizational slack and its interaction with outside business environment on the preference of ambidextrous knowledge search. In this research, the author not only tests the effect of organizational slack as a whole on the decision-making of knowledge search, but also opens the black box of organizational slack as absorbed, unabsorbed and potential slack, according to the level of being absorbed by the firm. The conclusion of this research is as follows:1) At the organizational boundary, firms with more slack tends to search ambidextrously, and absorbed slack plays the most important role in this process; At the technological boundary, more absorbed slack also allows firms to search ambidextrously, however, this effect will be hidden by other types of slack.2) Environmental dynamism will weaken the positive impact of slack, especially potential slack, on ambidextrous knowledge search preference at the organization boundary; however, no matter organizational slack as a whole or three types, the effect on ambidextrous knowledge search preference at the technological boundary won't be significantly affected by organizational dynamism.3) Environmental threat will weaken the positive impact of slack on ambidextrous knowledge search preference at the organization boundary, but different types of slack play different roles:absorbed and potential slack's positive effect will be strengthened, while unabsorbed slack to the opposite. At the technological boundary, the positive effect of absorbed slack will be strengthened by the increase of environmental threat. But threat doesn't significantly impact the effect of the whole organizational slack.Research 3 examines the effect of ambidexterity of local search and distant search, and its interaction with possessed resource (represented by firm size) and outside environment on firms'innovation performance. The empirical result reveals that 1) Compared with firms conducting singular search strategy, firms that search ambidextrously will have higher innovation performance, including higher innovation impact and more assigned patents.2) Firm size moderates the relationship of ambidexterity of local-distant search and innovation performance at both organizational and technological boundaries. Ambidextrous search is more beneficial for larger firms.3) Environmental dynamism doesn't significantly affect the performance effect of ambidextrous search at both organizational and technological boundaries.4) When faced with high environmental threat, firms search ambidextrously at technological boundary will have weakened innovation performance, while firms conduct ambidextrous search at organizational boundary won't be influenced significantly.This dissertation has several contributions as follows:1) This dissertation enriches and extends the context and empirical proofs by focusing on ambidexterity of local search and distant search.2) The debate between resource-based view and transaction cost theory in explaining the effect of absorptive capacity on firms' decision of knowledge search is solved in this dissertation.3) The black box of organizational slack is opened and examined by studying effects of different types of slack on firms'knowledge search choice.4) Comparative analysis between different boundaries is realized, and this dissertation also provides more evidence by confirming the positive effect of ambidexterity (in the appearance of ambidextrous knowledge search) on innovation performance, as well as explains the mechanism of innovation performance.