In the era of economic downturn, innovation-driven development has become a key force in China’s economic transformation. Firm strategy formulation is a highly complex task, and top management team is the central role in making strategic decisions. Existing literature discusses the impact of management competence on firm innovation performance, innovation level, innovation efficiency and innovation investment from the perspective of result orientation. This paper holds that strategy is the essential element of firm behavior, so innovation strategy has a higher priority than innovation input and efficiency. However, few studies accurately analyze the relationship between management competence and ambidextrous innovation strategy.

Based on the dual perspectives of Upper Echelons Theory and Trait Activation Theory, this paper empirically examines the impact of management competence on ambidextrous innovation strategy with a sample of 353 GEM companies, and explores the moderating effects of environmental uncertainty, team heterogeneity and managerial power. The results show that management competence significantly promotes ambidextrous innovation strategy; environmental uncertainty weakens the positive impact of management competence on ambidextrous innovation strategy and weakens that on exploratory innovation strategy to a greater extent. Team heterogeneity has a positive impact on ambidextrous innovation strategy, and has a greater degree of strengthening exploratory innovation strategy. This paper broadens the Upper Echelons Theory and explores the antecedents of ambidextrous innovation strategy from the micro perspective. In addition, it has great practical significance to guide firms to implement the transformation and upgrading of innovation strategy in the post-epidemic era.

The innovations of this paper are that: First, Trait Activation Theory, which belongs to psychology, has been brought into the field of strategic management. It makes up for the insufficient interpretation of strategic choice by Upper Echelons and builds a cross-theoretical communication bridge. Second, based on the perspective of management competence, this paper expands the antecedents of ambidextrous innovation strategy, and deepens the research on the impact of top management team on innovation strategy, which further represents the novel development of Upper Echelons Theory and provides empirical evidence of emerging economies. Third, the results reveal the difference in the impact of management competence on ambidextrous innovation strategy, and analyze the boundary conditions and contingency factors of management competence on innovation strategy by taking environmental uncertainty, team heterogeneity and managerial power into account.