The role of managerial activities in achieving Information technology ambidexterity and new product development performance in small and medium-sized enterprises

Abstract

Given their limited portfolio of resources, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have to manage information technology (IT) exploitation and exploration at the same time to support a major shift in their product focus while maintaining their current array of products. We theorise that SMEs rely on managerial activities to enable IT ambidexterity to enhance the performance of their new product development (NPD). To this end, we hypothesise and test the relationships between managerial activities, IT ambidexterity, and NPD performance. Using multiple respondent data from 292 high-tech SMEs, we find that managerial activities enable IT ambidexterity, and this relationship is moderated by structural configurations. Considering the NPD management challenges ushered in by the digital era, our findings identify IT ambidexterity as a key mechanism to enhance NPD performance in SMEs. Our results contribute novel insights into the effective role of managerial activities in SMEs and help to explain the role of IT ambidexterity in the NPD literature, thereby facilitating continued theory development in this field of research.