Balance Within and Across Domains: The Performance Implications of Exploration and Exploitation in Alliances

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Lavie, Dovev; Kang, Jingoo; Rosenkopf, Lori
• 署名单位: Technion Israel Institute of Technology; Nanyang Technological University; University of Pennsylvania
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.1100.0596
• 发表日期: 2011
• 页码: 1517-1538
• 关键词: strategy and firm performance; strategy and policy; strategic alliance networks; ambidextrous organizations; INTERORGANIZATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS; organization and management theory; Organizational learning; Exploration and exploitation

摘要

Organizational research advocates that firms balance exploration and exploitation, yet it acknowledges inherent challenges in reconciling these opposing activities. To overcome these challenges, such research suggests that firms establish organizational separation between exploring and exploiting units or engage in temporal separation whereby they oscillate between exploration and exploitation over time. Nevertheless, these approaches entail resource allocation trade-offs and conflicting organizational routines, which may undermine organizational performance as firms seek to balance exploration and exploitation within a discrete field of organizational activity (i.e., domain). We posit that firms can overcome such impediments and enhance their performance if they explore in one domain while exploiting in another. Studying the alliance portfolios of software firms, we demonstrate that firms do not typically benefit from balancing exploration and exploitation within the function domain (technology versus marketing and production alliances) and structure domain (new versus prior partners). Nevertheless, firms that balance exploration and exploitation across these domains by engaging in research and development alliances while collaborating with their prior partners, or alternatively, by forming marketing and production alliances while seeking new partners, gain in profits and market value. Moreover, we reveal that increases in firm size that exacerbate resource allocation trade-offs and routine rigidity reinforce the benefits of balance across domains and the costs of balance within domains. Our domain separation approach offers new insights into how firms can benefit from balancing exploration and exploitation. What matters is not simply whether firms balance exploration and exploitation in their alliance formation decisions but the means by which they achieve such balance.