Ambidextrous IS Strategy: The Dynamic Balancing Act of Developing a ‘Transform & Merge’ Strategy in the Banking Industry

Motivated by the lack of empirical IS strategy research in the M&A problem domain, in this paper we present a revelatory case study of a 7-year-long organizational balancing act of searching for the right information systems (IS) strategy in the pre-deal phase of a bank merger. Our case study is about simultaneous IT-driven organizational transformation and merger-driven integration, providing us with a fertile ground to study the development and evolution of ambidextrous IS strategies, which are underresearched. Based on the theoretical insights that emerge from our case study, we extend Chen et al.’s (2010) IS strategy typology and propose three different archetypes of IS ambidextrous strategy. Further theoretical insights relate to the required organizational capabilities for the successful implementation of IS ambidextrous strategies as well as the co-evolutionary interplay between business and IT units in that process. Future research should empirically test the IS ambidextrous strategy archetypes proposed in this paper as well as the associated findings.