The role of dynamic capabilities in the development of organisational ambidexterity and its effect on timely responsiveness in emerging market high‐tech firms

Abstract

Although organisational ambidexterity (hereafter referred to as ambidexterity) allows emerging market high‐tech firms (EMHTFs) to align themselves with existing markets and to explore and seize new market opportunities to retain their competitiveness in rapidly changing business environments, little is known about how ambidexterity is developed and the role that dynamic capabilities play in the development of ambidexterity. We examine how dynamic capabilities, specifically, sensing and reconfiguring capabilities, influence the development of ambidexterity and the effect of ambidexterity on timely responsiveness. We also investigate the moderating effects of firm characteristics (i.e. firm size, sector, age, and status) and environmental turbulence (i.e. market, competitive, and technological turbulence) on both relationships. We find that the application of sensing and reconfiguring capabilities enables EMHTFs to develop ambidexterity and that ambidexterity improves timely responsiveness. Additionally, the relationship between the use of sensing capability and ambidexterity and between ambidexterity and timely responsiveness, appear robust across varying levels of market, competitive, and technological turbulence, and regardless of firm size, sector, age, and status. Furthermore, while EMHTFs across different sectors, age groups, and status benefit from using the reconfiguring capability to develop ambidexterity, we find that large firms benefit more than SMEs as the resource availability advantage of large firms allow them to reconfigure resources to support ambidextrous orientations in various ways. Hence, large firms can develop greater ambidexterity than SMEs, whose scarce resources limit how they can reconfigure resources to support ambidextrous orientations.