The impact of firms’ knowledge network resilience on corporate sustainable performance: Roles of ambidextrous innovation and top management team faultlines

Knowledge networks are widely regarded as important enablers of corporate sustainable performance (CSP). However, knowledge networks are prone to disruptions in an increasingly volatile, complex, and uncertain external environment, underscoring the critical role of corporate knowledge network resilience (CKNR), defined as a knowledge network's ability to maintain the stability of knowledge acquisition, knowledge flow, and knowledge cooperation relationships. Drawing on conservation of resources theory and dynamic capability theory, this study explores how CKNR influences CSP through ambidextrous innovation and how this relationship is contingent on top management team (TMT) faultlines. The findings reveal that: (1) CKNR has a significant positive effect on CSP. The results remain consistent across different robustness and endogeneity tests. (2) Both exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation play a positive mediating role in this relationship, respectively. (3) TMT relationship-related faultlines weaken the mediating roles of both exploitative and exploratory innovation. Conversely, TMT task-related faultlines strengthen the mediating effect of exploratory innovation while weakening that of exploitative innovation.