Does ambidexterity consistency benefit small and medium-sized enterprises’ resilience?

This article examines the relationship between strategic consistency in ambidexterity and the resilience outcomes of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) after stressful and disruptive events. The underlying approaches taken by the majority of previous studies have focused on the role of strategic consistency as an advantage or disadvantage for firms when it comes to achieving resilience. We propose a model that contributes to the strategic management literature by considering that the relationship between strategic consistency and performance is not a straightforward one. Several constraints play a decisive role in how ambidexterity consistency affects SMEs’ resilience when these organizations, which may have different internal weaknesses, face extreme external events. Through a sample of 2,766 firms, we provide evidence of an inverted U-shape relationship between ambidexterity consistency and SME resilience outcomes under a context of scarce slack resources as the last global financial crisis.