Strategic Focus Alternation and Firm Resilience: A Systems-Thinking Perspective on Innovation Outcomes and Boundary Conditions

From a systems-thinking perspective, firms can be understood as adaptive socio-technical systems in which strategic resource allocation, innovation activities, organizational capabilities, and environmental conditions interact through dynamic feedback processes. This study examines whether strategic focus alternation, defined as the recurrent reallocation of resources between technology focus and market focus, is associated with firm resilience. Using 30,930 firm-year observations of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2010 to 2024, we construct a firm-level measure of strategic focus alternation and examine its association with resilience using industry and year fixed-effects models, complemented by multiple robustness analyses, propensity score matching, instrumental-variable estimation, Heckman two-stage estimation, and within-firm analyses. The results indicate that strategic focus alternation is positively associated with firm resilience, although the magnitude of this association is economically modest, suggesting that strategic focus alternation represents one contributing element within a broader organizational resilience system rather than a dominant managerial determinant. Strategic focus alternation is also positively associated with persistent innovation and ambidextrous innovation synergy; however, mediation analyses do not support these innovation outcomes as statistically significant transmission mechanisms linking strategic focus alternation to resilience. Furthermore, while the capability to undertake strategic focus alternation is positively associated with resilience across firms, greater within-firm alternation intensity, measured by switching frequency and magnitude, does not generate additional resilience benefits and is marginally negatively associated with resilience, indicating potential coordination and adjustment costs. Entrepreneurial orientation and knowledge integration capability further strengthen the positive association between strategic focus alternation and resilience. Finally, the findings suggest that organizational resilience depends less on frequent strategic switching than on disciplined strategic reconfiguration that maintains dynamic stability while enabling organizational adaptation under uncertainty. By integrating systems thinking with research on strategic resource allocation, organizational resilience, and innovation, this study provides a more comprehensive understanding of how firms balance strategic flexibility and organizational stability in dynamic environments.