Ambidexterity has been regarded as an emerging research paradigm in the organizational field. The current literature has reached some consensuses that effectively broaden and deepen our understanding of ambidexterity, but has also brought us some confusion about the construct itself and raised issues about what we know and don't know. Based on a systematic review of 79 papers published in mainstream organization and management journals, this paper summarizes and analyzes the evolution of this research field from five aspects: conceptual connotation, measurement, value effect boundary, implementation mechanisms and impact factors. This systematic review indicates that exploration and exploitation can be conceptualized either as the two poles of the same continuum, conflicting against each other, or as discrete activities, orthogonal and complementary to each other. Corresponding to the conflicting view, ambidexterity can be captured by computing the absolute difference of exploration and exploitation. In line with the orthogonal view, scholars tend to capture a firm's ambidexterity by computing the multiplicative interaction between exploration and exploitation or by adding the two. However, no matter which measurement strategy is employed, scholars failed to obtain adequate and consistent empirical evidence on the positive relationship between organizational ambidexterity and firm performance. Thus, recent researches have emphasized the importance of examining the boundary conditions of organizational ambidexterity. The mixed results of prior researches did not weaken the academic passion to explore the mechanisms that managers adopt to achieve ambidexterity at multiple organizational levels. In the extant literature, three mechanisms are identified, that is, structural ambidexterity, sequential ambidexterity, and contextual ambidexterity. More recently, given the importance of ambidexterity, a number of studies have attempted to understand its antecedents. Previous literature maintained that environmental conditions in terms of dynamism and competitiveness, organizational attributes such as structural differentiation, coordination, and organizational context, as well as attributes of top managers such as transformational leadership enable firms to balance the conflicting demands of explorative and exploitative activities and thus to achieve ambidexterity. Based on the paradigm framework, this paper presents four important avenues for future research, and points out that future work on ambidexterity must: (1) focus on the organizational level of analysis; (2) look at the essence of ambidexterity as an organizational ability; (3) capture the organizational ambidexterity based on the explicit organizational behaviors; and (4) identify the value intervals of ambidexterity and punctuated equilibrium or organizational vacillation. This paper makes three major contributions to the literature. First, it bridges the gap between the ambidexterity literature and the resource-capability view of the firm by emphasizing its ability nature, which will promote the inheritance and development of organization theory. Second, by articulating the differences between organizational ambidexterity and punctuated equilibrium, this paper provides a point of departure for the clarification of the confusions in extant literature about the implementation mechanisms of ambidexterity. Third, this paper serves as a starting point to effectively integrate the research findings obtained from different levels of analysis by clarifying that ambidexterity is an organizational level phenomenon and by emphasizing that future research must focus on the dynamic processes underlying its emergence.