The Impact of Boundary-Spanning Search Ambidexterity on Innovation Performance: The Moderating Role of Strategic Flexibility

In the face of rapid changes in technology paradigms and market demands, boundary-spanning search breaks through the constraints of a firm’s resources and capabilities, providing diversified channels for optimizing the structure of innovation capabilities. It serves as a powerful guarantee for firms to seize market and technology dominance and maintain competitive advantages. This paper introduces organizational ambidexterity theory into boundary-spanning search research, defining the two dimensions (matching ambidexterity and combined ambidexterity) of boundary-spanning search ambidexterity. It elucidates the unique advantages of these two dimensions on firm innovation performance and the moderating effect of strategic flexibility on these impacts. Based on this, a model of boundary-spanning search ambidexterity and firm innovation performance is constructed, and relevant propositions are proposed.