Abstract: Exploration and exploitation play an important role in firms' development. However, they have different or even contradictory requirements for firms. For example, exploration emphasizes flexibility, autonomy and experimentation, while exploitation stresses efficiency, control and improvement. How to achieve a balance between the two to obtain the advantages of both has become a focus of current researches. Grounded on the "means-end" relationship, effectuation and causation are proposed as two alternative logics of strategic decision-making and provide a new perspective for studying paths to ambidexterity. Through a qualitative comparative analysis of innovation behaviors of 79 small and medium-sized firms, this paper finds that four dimensions of effectuation logic, including means, affordable loss, control and contingency orientations, are interconnected with causation logic measured by expected return orientation. These five antecedents combine to create four paths to ambidexterity:(1) "classical effectuation" path where all four orientations of effectuation logic are present while expected return orientation of causation logic is absent; (2) "flexible control" path where control and contingency orientations are present while means and affordable loss orientations are absent; (3) "profit-oriented control" path where control and expected return orientations are present while affordable loss and means orientations are absent; (4) "profit-oriented trail"path where expected return and means orientations are present while affordable loss and control orientations are absent. Furthermore, this paper compares these four paths with the four paths leading to unbalanced exploration and exploitation (either stronger exploration or stronger exploitation) and identifies their causal asymmetry. By extending the effectuation logic born in the field of entrepreneurship to the field of innovation, this paper not only reveals the paradoxical relationships between effectual and and causal logic, but also deepens the research on the organizational ambidexterity and provides implications for dealing with other forms of paradoxes.

Key words: effectuation, exploration, exploitation, ambidexterity, qualitative comparative analysis