Knowledge-intensive projects that span intra- and inter-firm boundaries such as new product development, R&D, and information systems development pose unique challenges for organizations. Such activities must be closely aligned with organizational goals and at the same time be adaptive to the evolving business priorities and market environments. While this capacity to be ambidextrous-simultaneously aligned and adaptive-is recognized as being crucial in such undertakings, no prior research exists on how organizations achieve such ambidexterity. In this paper, using information systems development (ISD) as one instance of such knowledge-intensive undertakings, we develop the idea that structural and cognitive intrafirm linkages enhance ambidexterity. They do so by providing a conducive institutional context for temporally and spatially integrating specialized knowledge that lie dispersed across subunit and organizational boundaries. Knowledge integration is therefore a central explanatory process in this nomological network.

Results based on data collected from chief information officers and business unit managers in 133 firms support these ideas. The paper makes three novel contributions to organization theory:
(1) it shows that spatial and temporal knowledge integration fully mediates the relationship between subunit linkages and ambidexterity in knowledge-intensive activities that span subunit boundaries
(2) it provides insights into how intrafirm organization of such activities can explain interfirm differences in ambidexterity , and
(3) it demonstrates that higher levels of knowledge integration are more valuable in enhancing adaptability but not alignment in the process in the presence of greater technological turbulence . Implications for research and practice are also discussed.