Strategic Adaptation in Shifting Landscapes: A Paradox‐Theoretic and Computational Perspective

ABSTRACT Organizations must simultaneously exploit current competencies and explore new opportunities—yet theory offers limited guidance on when each strategic logic dominates and under what combination of environmental conditions ambidexterity is warranted. We integrate paradox theory with an NK performance landscape framework to examine how exploitation‐focused, exploration‐focused, and ambidextrous organizational configurations navigate the coupled tensions of environmental complexity, turbulence, and munificence. Using computational simulation, we model the search and adaptation behaviors of each configuration across systematically varied landscape conditions. Our results reveal that ambidextrous configurations outperform under high complexity, high turbulence, and low munificence, whereas exploitation‐focused configurations outperform when munificence is high and complexity is low. Critically, we identify a ceiling effect: beyond a threshold of landscape ruggedness, the advantage of ambidexterity reverses, producing an inverted‐U relationship between explorative adaptation and combined environmental conditions. These findings extend paradox theory by specifying the boundary conditions under which each organizational logic dominates, and advance NK methodology by introducing a coupled, multi‐dimensional landscape that jointly represents environmental complexity, dynamism, and resource availability.