An empirical examination of vacillation theory

• Published date: 01 June 2017
• Date: 01 June 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2588

Strategic Management Journal

Strat. Mgmt. J.,38: 1356–1370 (2017)

Published online EarlyView 9 November2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/smj.2588

Received 22 September 2014;Final revision received26 August 2016

AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OF VACILLATION

THEORY

JINGOO KANG,1*RIBUGA KANG,2and SANG-JOON KIM3

1Strategy, Management and Organization, Nanyang Business School, Nanyang

Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

2Department of Management, CUHK Business School, Chinese University of Hong

Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

3Ewha School of Business, Ewha Womans University,Seoul, South Korea

Research summary: Since Nickerson and Zenger (2002) proposed how vacillation may lead to

organizational ambidexterity, large-sample empirical tests of their theory have been missing. In

this paper, we empirically examine the performance implications of vacillation. Building upon

vacillation theory, we predict that the frequency and scale of vacillation will have inverted

U-shaped relationships with rm performance. We test our hypotheses using patent-based

measures of explorationand exploitation in the context of technological innovation and knowledge

search.

Managerial summary: Firms often shift their focus on technological innovation and knowledge

search fromseeking new and novel knowledge (i.e., exploration) to extending and rening existing

knowledge (i.e., exploitation) or vice versa. We examine how the frequency and scale of rms

vacillating between exploration and exploitation may affect their performance. We nd that both

too infrequent or too frequent changes and a too small or too large scale of changes are not

desirable. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Building upon the seminal work of March (1991)

and Tushman and O’Reilly (1996), strategy and

management scholars have paid considerable atten-

tion to the subject of organizational ambidexterity.

Recently, an explanation of how organizational

ambidexterity may manifest– known as vacillation

between exploration and exploitation– has been

discussed in a few theoretical studies (Boumgarden,

Nickerson, and Zenger, 2012; Gulati and Puranam,

2009; Nickerson and Zenger, 2002). Vacillation

Keywords: exploration and exploitation; vacillation the-

ory; organizational ambidexterity; organizational change;

rm performance

*Correspondence to: Jingoo Kang, Strategy, Management and

Organization, Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological

University, S3-01C-89, 50 Nanyang Avenue, 639798 Singapore,

Singapore. E-mail: jingoo@ntu.edu.sg

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

theory suggests that vacillation between discrete

formal organizational structures will temporarily

create an ambidextrous informal organization

with both characteristics of exploration and

exploitation.

Despite substantial progress in our understand-

ing of organizational ambidexterity, only a few

qualitative studies but no large-sample statistical

studies on the vacillation hypothesis have been

conducted (Adler, Goldoftas, and Levine, 1999;

Boumgarden et al., 2012; Brown and Eisenhardt,

1997). Although case-based qualitative studies

offer valuable contributions of their own, their

contributions are more about theory building and

hypothesis generation rather than hypothesis testing

(Eisenhardt, 1989). The absence of large-sample

statistical tests on the performance implications

of vacillation has not only stymied the evalua-

tion of theoretical predictions on vacillation, but