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以實質選擇權觀點探討探索性與利用性活動對公司績效之影響：中介效果模型
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1. Introduction
Since the seminar discussion of March (1991) on “exploring new possibilities” and
“exploiting old certainties” as two distinct adaptive mechanisms for organizations, a
substantial body of research has advanced the typology in areas such as organizational
learning (Levinthal and March, 1993; Rosenkopf and Nerkar, 2001), organizational ecology
(Burgelman, 2002), technological innovation (Benner and Tushman, 2002, 2003),
acquisitions (Vermeulen and Barkema, 2001), and alliances (Vermeulen and Barkema, 2001;
Lavie and Rosenkopf, 2006). From a strategic management viewpoint, exploration and
exploitation are two different mechanisms for improving a firm’s performance. Exploration
provides opportunities for future growth, but it also creates more uncertainties about returns.
Exploitation helps firms realize instant gains, but it can lead to a “competence trap”
(Levinthal and March, 1993). The danger of overemphasizing either approach needs to be
noted while managing firm performance (Vermeulen and Barkema, 2001; He and Wong,
2004; Rothaermel and Deeds, 2004; Lavie and Rosenkopf, 2006).
March (1991) argues that balancing the trade-off between exploration and exploitation
is critical to a firm’s survival and prosperity. However, the above mentioned fundamental
discrepancy between exploration and exploitation can create tension as the firm tries to
coordinate the two activities simultaneously to enhance firm performance. For example,
although an organic organization fosters exploration, it discourages the development of
routines for refining existing competencies to gain efficiency and effectiveness. Likewise,
the organizational inertia (Hannan and Freeman, 1984) that promotes exploitation may
hinder the generation of new ideas necessary to capture future opportunities. Although
numerous efforts have been put into this issue, how this balance can be maintained to
generate profits has remained largely untested (He and Wong, 2004; Uotila, Maula, Keil, and
Zahra, 2009).
Some studies have addressed this issue empirically using different operational
definitions of exploration and exploitation. One stream of literature modeled exploration and
exploitation as orthogonal activities that positively interact (Katila and Ahuja, 2002; He and
Wong, 2004; Jansen, Van den Bosch, and Volberda, 2006) while the other line of research
has assumed these two activities as two ends of a continuum that crowd out each other
(Uotila et al., 2009). The controversy comes mainly from the focus of research. When a
study assumes that the resources needed to pursue exploration and exploitation are abundant
(e.g., knowledge in Nerkar (2003) work), or when it aims to analyze exploration and
exploitation in two different domains (e.g., forming alliances with new partners versus