External information seeking and organizational ambidexterity in SMEs: Does empowerment climate matter?
基于1439家法国制造业中小企业的调查，研究了外部信息搜寻（环境扫描和外部管理网络）对组织双元性的影响，发现授权氛围正向调节扫描广度、负向调节网络深度的作用。
Abstract Access to external information is considered crucial to achieving organizational ambidexterity (OA) while presenting specific challenges for SMEs due to their limited resources. However, little is known about how SMEs can best benefit from their external information‐seeking activities for OA purposes, given specific organizational practices. Our paper addresses this research gap by analyzing the effects of external information seeking (i.e., environmental scanning and external managerial networking) on OA while considering the moderating role of empowerment climate in SMEs. Based on a survey administered to CEOs of 1439 French manufacturing SMEs, our main results indicate that empowerment climate positively moderates the effect of scanning breadth on OA but negatively moderates the effect of networking depth. This suggests that SMEs should emphasize external information‐seeking activities that are appropriate to their level of empowerment climate so that the positive effects on OA can be fully realized.