This article examines the effect of regulatory search on firm innovativeness using survey data from Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Australian listed and private firms. We used a self-developed scale to measure regulatory search, which consists of both reactive and proactive regulatory search. The results show that only reactive regulatory search exhibits a positive and direct association with firm innovativeness. However, the results suggest that slack moderates the relations between the two regulatory search factors and innovativeness in different ways. Specifically, under a high (low) slack environment, reactive regulatory search is negatively (positively) related to innovativeness, while, under a high (low) slack environment, proactive regulatory search is positively (negatively) related to innovativeness.
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