Not all Ways Lead to Rome: Different Approaches to Ambidexterity in Acquisition Sequences

While ambidexterity, in general, is argued to be performance enhancing, researchers have found that in the context of acquisitions the added complexity tends to reduce performance. We expand the scope of the analysis from individual acquisitions within a single year to acquisition sequences and examine the performance implications of three different ways to achieve ambidexterity. Based on a panel study of 153 active acquirers from 1991 to 2016, we corroborate the findings of prior research that combining exploration and exploitation in individual acquisitions is not performance enhancing. On the other hand, separating exploration and exploitation to different acquisitions is positively related to acquirer performance and temporal cycling between exploration and exploitation is related to acquirer performance in a U-shaped manner. Our findings contribute to an improved understanding of how to achieve ambidexterity through acquisition sequences.