A Systematic Literature Review of Organizational Innovation : Exploration, Exploitation, and Ambidexterity through a Multilevel Lens

While research on exploration, exploitation, and ambidexterity is burgeoning with hundreds of articles published each year, scholars have recently called for more clarity regarding the definitional qualities and the conditions under which they relate to other variables. In this paper, we adopt a systematic literature review methodology, to analyze 457 studies published in the organization literature between 2010 and 2019 and develop an overarching model that integrates the features, antecedents, moderators, and consequences of exploration, exploitation, and ambidexterity across different levels of analysis. In this way, we provide a much needed systematic synthesis of the literature that depicts the current state of knowledge while offering a unified overarching model of exploration, exploitation and ambidexterity at the individual, group, organizational, and inter-organizational level of analysis. Our systematic review contributes to the theoretical development of the ambidexterity and broader organizational innovation literature and offers future research directions