Impact of Synergy between IT and Business Process on Organizational Performance: a Perspective of Ambidexterity Theory

It is imperative for a firm to possess capability to pursue dual conflict goals simultaneously, i.e., ambidexterity capability, in turbulence market environment. As a result of synergy between IT and business process, a firm is able to build its ambidexterity capability, namely, alignment between them to gain organizational alignment capability which offers the firm short-term performance on the one hand, and modularization of business process enabled by IT to gain organizational adaptation capability which offers long-term performance on the other. The ambidexterity capability can lead to higher organizational performance. Furthermore, we find that the linkage between ambidexterity capability and organizational performance is moderated by environmental turbulence. To our knowledge, ambidexterity theory is firstly employed in IS field to explicate the debate on IT value. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.