Is Ambidextrous Innovation Strategy Beneficial to International Joint Venture Performance? Evidence from China

While the strategic marketing literature promotes ambidexterity as a critical innovation strategy that can enhance firm performance, its value in the international marketing context remains underexplored. Combining the ambidexterity and international marketing literatures, this study investigates how ambidexterity affects performance of the international joint ventures (IJVs) and how parent control asymmetry and cultural distance moderate the effects. Using polynomial analysis, this study simultaneously considers both the balance and intensity elements of ambidexterity and examines their effects on IJV performance in China. The authors argue that ambidexterity balance has a U-shaped effect on IJV performance, whereas ambidexterity intensity exerts an inverted U-shaped effect; such effects are further moderated by the unique features of IJVs—that is, parent control asymmetry and cultural distance. With a data set that combines survey and archival data on IJVs in China, the authors find strong empirical evidence for the hypotheses. These findings offer important advances to innovation research on IJVs.