CEOs' ambivalent interpretations, organizational market capabilities, and corporate entrepreneurship as responses to strategic issues

We apply the heuristic-systematic model, an information processing perspective, to examine how CEOs' ambivalent interpretations of strategic issues affect corporate entrepreneurship (CE). Ambivalent interpretations indicate that CEOs label strategic issues as both positive and negative. Based on a two-wave survey of 170 firms in mainland China during global economic crisis that began in 2008, we find that firms' market capabilities moderate the relationship between ambivalence and CE. Although organizations with strong market capabilities tend to adopt CE activities to cope with ambivalent environmental changes, those with weak market capabilities actually reduce their CE activities in a highly ambivalent environment.