Business Paradoxes, Black Boxes, and Big Data: Beyond Organizational Ambidexterity: Essays on Ambidexterity as a Multilevel Concept

This is a study of the conflicts involved when firms try to do new things. Try too little, and you risk being left behind as new competition realigns the playing field around you. Try hard, and you risk cannibalizing and slowly eroding away your legacy business. This story has been told in many forms. The focus of this thesis is ambidexterity - the ability for a firm to exploit mature skills and existing business paradigms while simultaneously exploring technological innovations and new market opportunities. This study sets out to obtain a multilevel understanding of the individual, firm, and industry-level tensions between new and old business. The main research questions revolve around how the conflicts between exploration and exploitation are managed, both within as well as beyond the organizational boundaries, and what the performance implications are. The dissertation consists of an introduction, a conclusion, and in between four empirical papers, which address specific research gaps in current ambidexterity literature.