The Development of individual ambidexterity across institutional environments: symmetric and configurational analyses

Buoyed by recent calls for research to explore micro-level cognitive explanations for ambidexterity, this study examines how individuals’ self-efficacy and resilience affect individual ambidexterity across different institutional environments. Building on social cognitive theory, we posit that self-efficacy enhances ambidexterity via resilience and that such relationship varies across economic institutional environments. Our symmetric (PLS-SEM) and configurational (fsQCA) analyses of 1907 knowledge workers in China, New Zealand and Australia provide supportive and complementary evidence for these theoretical arguments. Specifically, PLS-SEM reveals that the mediating effects of resilience on the relationship between self-efficacy and individual ambidexterity are stronger in an environment where economic institutions are weak. fsQCA complements PLS-SEM by showing that individual ambidexterity can be explained by multiple configurations of psychological self-efficacy, resilience, characteristics related to institutions, and personal demographic factors. Taken together, these findings contribute to the international business literature by providing a nuanced understanding of how different psychological resources integrate and interact with institutional factors to enhance individual ambidexterity.