외부지식탐색 활동에 기반한 양손잡이전략의 실행방안에 대한 연구

A number of prior research suggested that a balance between exploitation for current capabilities and exploration for fundamentally new competencies is crucial for firms' long term success. Researchers have recognized, however, the fact that firms may face inherent obstacles when they pursue both exploration and exploitation internally, highlighting the contradictory natures of activities designed to achieve different goals. In this regard, the research on organizational learning has emphasized the importance of firms' external search behavior for new-knowledge acquisition since internal tensions can be mitigated by externalizing exploration. The fundamental logic of this argument is that the overall balance between exploration and exploitation can be achieved by boundary-spanning activities across organizations. However, the empirical evidence for this argument remains still scare. Meanwhile research on open innovation has focused firm's search behaviors as a critical factor for influencing innovative performance. They argued that firms' external search efforts can be categorized into two distinct dimensions, which are exploratory and exploitative search. Although these arguments imply that firms need to simultaneously pursue both types of external search to become ambidextrous, their interaction impact has rarely been investigated. Building bridges between organizational learning and open innovation perspectives on ambidexterity, this study explores the impacts of firms' external and interorganizational balance on innovation performance. In particular, we hypothesize that firms' external exploratory and exploitative searches are mutually beneficial and therefore have interaction effects on market share increase of their innovative products. We further posit that both exploratory and exploitative search have positive effects on market share increase when they combined with firms efforts to build their internal complementary assets. Based on a sample of 713 Korean manufacturing firms that have released new products between 2011 and 2013, we found strong positive interaction impact between exploitative and exploratory search on market share increase of firms' innovative products. With respect to our hypotheses on interorganizational ambidexterity between internal complementary assets and external search dimensions, however, we found no support; Interaction effect between exploratory search and internal complementary assets was not significant, whereas interaction effect between exploitative search and internal complementary assets presented negative impact on market share increase of firms’ innovative products, indicating a substitution effect with each other. One possible explanation of these unexpected results is that a combination between internal and external activities to achieve ambidexterity may cause ‘Not Invented Here syndrome’ as s side effect - internal resistance of firms members to externally developed knowledge. The findings of this study make several contributions to research on organizational ambidexterity. First, they suggest more study on the effects of balancing activities between external and internal searches. Although many scholars have expected the external search activities complement the internal searches to achieve ambidexterity, this might not true. The finding of this study suggests further study on possible tensions and conflicts in interorganizational ambidexterity. Our findings have important implications for managers as well. They suggest that achieving competitive advantage by simultaneously pursuing both exploratory and exploitative search can be a key strategic challenge for managers. Additionally, managing an interorgnizational ambidexterity may bring a further set of challenges for managers to share the vision and values of external search activities with all organizational members.