Ambidexterity in Information Systems Research: Overview of Conceptualizations, Antecedents, and Outcomes

Organizations that are not efficient and innovative today quickly become irrelevant tomorrow. Ambidexterity (i.e.,
simultaneously conducting two seemingly contradicting activities, such as exploitation and exploration) helps
organizations to overcome this challenge and, hence, has become increasingly popular with manifold applications in
information systems (IS) research. However, we lack a systematic understanding of ambidexterity research, its
research streams, and their future trajectory. Hence, we conduct a systematic literature review on ambidexterity in IS
research and identify six distinct research streams that use an ambidexterity lens: IT-enabled organizational
ambidexterity, ambidextrous IT capability, ambidexterity in IS development, ambidextrous IS strategy, ambidextrous
inter-organizational relationships, and organizational ambidexterity in IS. We present the current state of research in
each stream. More so, we comprehensively overview application areas, conceptualizations, antecedents for, and
outcomes of ambidexterity. Hence, this study contributes to the emergent theme of ambidexterity in IS research