A Meta-Analytical Review of Antecedents of Organizational Ambidexterity

2. Literature Review 

The extant literature studies the antecedents of organizational ambidexterity in diverse contexts across different industries. Organizations face the challenge of advancing a capability with the two fundamental concepts of exploration and exploitation that come from distinct knowledge-processing capabilities (Floyd and Lane, 2000; Koryak et al., 2018). Exploitation refers to the actions which refine and expand the existing setup and concentrates more on the choice and application of the available and existing knowledge while contrarily exploration refers to the process of looking for opportunities by investigation and recombination to deepen knowledge and develop better competencies compared to the existing ones (Jansen et al., 2008; Lavie et al., 2011). While the domination of exploitation leads to routines below the standards, an increased focus on exploration may increase the experimentation costs (Nielsen, B. B., & Gudergan, S., 2012). Organizations often find it difficult to efficiently take out time and pursue both explorations to take care of the present demands and exploitation to tap future potentials (March, 1994; Koryak et al., 2018). For the improvement of exploration or exploitation, some antecedents of ambidexterity must be jointly considered (March, 1994). This paper thoroughly discusses each antecedent of ambidexterity identified, and its impact on organizational ambidexterity is analysed.