단기적 혁신을 추구하는 활용적 혁신활동과 장기적 혁신을 추구하는 탐험적 혁신활동을 동시에 추구하는 개념인 기술혁신 양면성은 기업의 혁신활동을 설명하는 중심개념으로 간주되고 있다. 본 연구에서는 기술혁신 양면성과 관련된 요인 중 정보기술 역량과 환경 동태성에 초점을 두고 이들이 기술혁신 양면성 및 경영성과에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지 국내 중소기업을 대상으로 실증연구를 수행하였다. 구체적으로 본 연구에서는 첫째, 정보기술 역량 중 정보기술 인프라와 정보기술 활용능력이 기술혁신 양면성의 두 가지 측면인 활용적 기술혁신과 탐험적 기술혁신 각각에 어떠한 영향을 미치며, 또 이들이 경영성과에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지를 확인하였다. 둘째, 환경 동태성의 정도에 따라 정보기술 역량이 기술혁신 양면성에 미치는 양상과 기술혁신 양면성이 경영성과에 미치는 양상에 차이가 있는지를 확인하였다. 실증분석 결과 정보기술 역량은 기술혁신 양면성에 정(+)의 영향을 미치며, 기술혁신 양면성 또한 경영성과에 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 환경 동태성과 관련한 결과에서 주목해야 할 점은 동태성이 높아짐에 따라 정보기술 역량 중 정보기술 활용능력의 중요성이 높아진다는 점이며, 또 동태성이 높아짐에 따라 활용적 기술혁신보다 탐험적 기술혁신의 영향이 상대적으로 높아진다는 점이다. 본 연구의 결과는 기술혁신 양면성의 추구에 있어서 정보기술의 역할이 무엇인지와 환경 동태성에 따라 정보기술의 역할이 어떻게 달라질 수 있는지, 또 환경 동태성에 대응하는데 있어서 기술혁신 양면성의 두 활동 간 자원배분과 비중을 전략적으로 어떻게 조정해야 할 것인지에 대한 전략적 시사점을 제공해 주고 있다.
Ambidexterity is regarded as a central concept to explain the innovation mechanism of firms, which simultaneously pursues exploratory activities that are related to long-term and disruptive innovation by creating new knowledge and exploitative activities that are related to short-term and incremental innovation using existing knowledge. Although there exist several affecting factors on ambidexterity and firm performance, this study focused on two ? information technology and environmental dynamism. In view point of organizational resources anc capabilities, information technology is an essential means because ambidexterity basically conduct collection and sharing of in- formation inside and outside organization, and creating and sharing of new knowledge as well. Furthermore, dynamism is considered as an important environmental factor from the perspective of technological innovation as an organizational response to the environmental uncertainties. In this study information technology capability was considered as two sub-dimensions ? information technology infrastructure and information technology utilization ability ? and ambidexteiry was studied in two perspectives ? exploitation and exploration. Specifically research hypotheses were established to confirm the causal relationship between information technology capabilities, innovation ambidexterity, and business performance. Furthermore, in order to investigate the moderating effect of environmental dynamism on causal relationships, we divided the whole samples into two groups according to the degree of environmental dynamism ? the group with high environmental dynamism and the group with low environmental dynamism ? and compared whether there are differences in the causal pathway. The results of this study were as follows. Firstly, analysis result of the influencing relationship between information technology and the ambidexterity showed that both information technology infrastructure and information technology utilization ability were found to have a positive(+) effect on both exploitation and exploration. Through these empirical results, it can be confirmed that in- formation technology infrastructure and information technology utilization ability not only have an important effect on both exploitative innovation activities and explorative innovation activities that constitute the two perspectives of technological innovation, but also are organizational capabilities and resources to achieve the two perspectives of technological innovation. Secondly, as an analysis result of the relationship between ambidexterity and business performance, it was found that both innovation activities ? exploitation and exploration ? had a positive(+) effect on business performance. Also, as a result of analyzing the path coefficient, it was found that the effect of exploitation activities on business performance was higher than that of exploration activities on business performance. Since exploitation mainly refers to activities related to short-term innovation and exploration mainly means carrying out activities related to long-term innovation, the effect on business performance seemed to be high in exploitation in this study. Therefore, when establishing a strategy in practice, in the performance evaluation, there is inevitably a difference in the type and duration of performance creation between exploitation activities and exploration activities, so performance type and criteria should be established reflecting the characteristics of each innovation activities. Thirdly, one of the main focus of this study was whether there was a difference in the way that information technology capabilities affect the ambidexterity according to the degree of environmental dynamism, and the effect of exploitation and exploration on business performance. First of all, in the case of the group with low environmental dynamism, both information technology infrastructure and information utilization ability acted as factors influencing exploitation and exploration. However, only the information technology utilization ability acted as a factor influencing exploitation and exploration in the case of the group with high environmental dynamism. These results are inferred to be a phenomenon that occurs due to the nature of dynamism. High dynamism means that the degree of instability and change in the market is large, such as shortening the product life cycle as customer demands change rapidly. It can be interpreted that the information technology utilization ability becomes more important for firms to increase their ability to sense and respond to the market. Next, according to the degree of environmental dynamism, the result investigating whether there was a difference in the effect of two perspectives of ambidexterity showed that the effect of exploration on business performance was relatively high in the group with high environmental dynamism and the effect of exploitation on business performance was relatively high in the group with low environmental dynamism.
The results of this study show what the role of information technology is in pursuing ambidexterity, how the role of information technology can change according to environmental dynamism, and resource allocation between the two activities of innovation in response to environmental dynamism.