Extending the IS Strategy Typology: An Assessment of Strategy Impacts on Capabilities Development and Performance

A typology of IS strategy has recently been forwarded in the literature in which IS strategy is categorized into three types: Innovative, Conservative, and Undefined. But more recent investigations in IS found that when firms attempt to take an ambidextrous approach, to some degree exhibiting both moderately innovative and conservative strategy behaviors, firms tend to perform equally well or better than those implementing predominately a single approach. Therefore, this paper proposes an extension to the existing typology by including a fourth strategy—IS Ambidextrous. It contributes by operationalizing and testing the extended typology in a model that assesses IS strategies’ impacts on dynamic capabilities development and ultimately on performance. It is found that, in practice, a substantially high percentage of firms strive to be ambidextrous and that this approach to IS is a rewarding strategy and by no means inferior to any of the other IS approaches in the typology.