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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how absorptive capacity mediates the relationship between ambidextrous organizational learning and performance among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Based on the resource-based view (RBV) and the dynamic capability approach, this paper uses the resource-capability-performance framework to construct the theoretical model of this study and tests the theoretical model with the questionnaire survey data of 189 SMEs in mainland China.

Ambidextrous organizational learning has different effects on SMEs' performance in terms of survival performance and growth performance. Both exploitative learning and exploratory learning have positive effects on absorptive capacity, and absorptive capacity has positive influences on both the survival performance and growth performance of SMEs. Absorptive capacity plays different mediating roles in the relationships between ambidextrous organizational learning and SMEs' performance: absorptive capacity plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between exploratory learning and SME growth performance, while absorptive capacity plays complete mediating roles in other relationships.

Managers must stress the use of exploratory learning in order to promote SMEs' growth performance. However, to foster both absorptive capacity and SME performance in terms of survival and growth, managers must pay more attention to take advantage of ambidextrous organizational learning. Government as policymakers should create a favorable environment that enable SMEs to benefit much more from the deployment of ambidextrous organizational learning and absorptive capacity.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to theorize and test the mediating role of absorptive capacity in the linkage between ambidextrous organizational learning and SME performance in terms of survival and growth. Additionally, this study also is the first to provide empirical support for the impact of ambidextrous organizational learning on absorptive capacity among SMEs.

Absorptive capacity is a knowledge-processing ability that hospitality organizations should hone to create competitive advantage in a fierce business environment. This study aims to examine an integrative model explaining how hospitality organizations infuse external knowledge into competitive advantage via absorptive capacity processes and opportunity-capturing abilities.

This study used structural equation modeling, using the R Lavaan package, with 288 survey responses collected from hospitality employees.

Structural equation modeling with multiple indirect relationships presents a holistic picture of how hospitality organizations develop externally acquired knowledge into organizational outcomes through detailed absorptive capacity processes. Unit size is found to positively moderate the indirect relationship between external acquisition and competitive advantage through knowledge transformation only. Competitiveness level negatively moderates indirect relationships through assimilation and transformation.

The findings highlight the importance of hospitality organizations’ knowledge management capabilities through acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation processes. These integrative mechanisms can be facilitated by intraorganizational coordinative processes through collective interpretations and applications of knowledge and effective organizational routines based on management and technical support.

This study proposes an integrative model encompassing a process perspective and the role of intraorganizational coordination in bridging potential and realized absorptive capacity.

The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of high-involvement work systems (HIWS) on absorptive capacity. In addition, the mediating effect of happiness at work in the relationship between high-involvement work practices and absorptive capacity is analyzed.

A 2-1-2 bathtub multilevel mediation model was used to analyze a sample of 783 employees from 111 bank branches, gathering data at three different times.

The results reveal that HIWS positively affect absorptive capacity. In addition, they show that happiness at work partially mediates the relationship between HIWS and absorptive capacity.

Happiness at work is a fundamental element for knowledge absorption. The findings support the basic assumptions of the job demands-resources model, and demonstrate how HIWS, acting as a job resource, lead to positive attitudes (happiness at work) and, in turn, to positive outcomes (absorptive capacity). The proposed HIWS, based on the assumptions of the mutual gains model, reveal a positive employment relationship with effects on both HAW and organizational outcomes. If organizations expose their employees to management practices that have specific benefits for their HAW, employees are more likely to perform their jobs in ways that will promote their absorptive capacity.

Technological entrepreneurship concerns the transformation of potentially viable technological opportunities into successful businesses. Absorptive capacity is argued to be essential for this transformation, since it can facilitate the prediction of new technology trends and the assimilation and application of new knowledge to produce new commercial outputs. The investigation of the relationships between absorptive capacity, technological entrepreneurship and their impact on Guangdong technology firms' performance is the purpose of this study.

In this aim a positive causal chain from absorptive capacity to technological entrepreneurship and from this latter to performance is tested through a mediation analysis, which uses an ordinary least squares regression‐based path analytical framework for estimating indirect effects on a sample of 113 Guangdong technology‐based firms.

Findings are consistent with the hypothesis that greater absorptive capacity leads to greater technological entrepreneurship, which in turn leads to greater performance. Therefore evidence is provided about both the mediating role of technological entrepreneurship and the role of absorptive capacity as its antecedent in relation to Guangdong‐based technology firms' performance.

A relevant but somewhat neglected relationship is examined using an integrative model in the Guangdong context. Moreover the study uses direct measures of absorptive capacity as a capability and provides a firm‐level operationalization of technological entrepreneurship. In so doing it also adopts state‐of‐the‐art analysis techniques and highlights the relevance of investments in soft factors for Guangdong technology firms' path towards excellence.

Open innovation and information systems have been key topics in the theoretical domain, but little empirical research thoroughly examines how information technology (IT) capability affects open innovation performance. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between IT capability and open innovation performance and to expose the inner mechanism at the firm level.

This paper collected firm-level data in China; 232 usable questionnaires from different firms were collected. Then, the study used a structural equation model by AMOS for hypothesis testing.

The results indicate that both internal IT capability and external IT capability have positive impacts on open innovation performance; potential absorptive capacity and realized absorptive capacity mediate the relationship between external IT capability and open innovation performance. Additionally, realized absorptive capacity plays a mediating role in the relationship between internal IT capability and open innovation performance.

These findings indicate that practitioners should pay attention to the important relationship between absorptive capacity and IT capability and open innovation performance in Chinese businesses.

Existing research has emphasized the influence of IT on open innovation, but empirical studies have not thoroughly focused on the inner mechanisms of the effect of IT capability on open innovation performance. Drawing on firm capability theory, this paper classifies IT capability as internal and external IT capability and absorptive capacity as potential and realized absorptive capacity. Then, this paper confirms the mediating role of absorptive capacity between IT capability and open innovation performance.

Despite the established significance of absorptive capacity, there is a worrying lack of research that empirically examines its antecedents. With a call for investigation guided by the knowledge-based theory, the purpose of this paper is to bridge any probable gap by exploring the effect that an organization’s knowledge stock and its knowledge integrating mechanisms have on the development of its absorptive capacity.

On the basis of a survey administered to a sample comprising owners of small Indian automotive firms, this paper empirically examines the direct effect of an organization’s knowledge stock (including knowledge breadth and depth) and the moderating role of its structure-related mechanisms (e.g., formalization) on its potential and realized absorptive capacities. The study uses survey data from 226 small business owners and multiple linear regression analysis to examine the significance of its hypotheses.

The results show that knowledge stock has a statistically notable influence on a small firm’s absorptive capacity. The enabling role of formalization in the relationship between knowledge stock and absorptive capacity is also evident.

Given the handicap of small firms vis-à-vis large firms to deploy internal R&D capabilities, business owners must ensure not to confuse absorptive capacity with the pre-existence of R&D capabilities.

The unbundling of knowledge stock into breadth and depth of knowledge enables business owners and researchers to understand how any particular knowledge stock can relate to an organization’s absorptive capacity.

This paper aims to seek to explain the influence of power asymmetry and the moderating role of an organization’s absorptive and desorptive capacity on enhancing supply chain competence from its orientation to open innovation with its supply network.

To perform this study, the authors use data collected from 262 European firms. They apply regression analysis to test the moderating role of an organization’s absorptive and desorptive capacity on enhancing its supply chain competence from its orientation to open innovation.

The results confirm both the influence of power asymmetry and absorptive capacity on obtaining benefits that derive from an organization’s orientation to open innovation. The results do not, however, support the moderating effect of an organization’s desorptive capacity. Subsequent analyses performed in the study show that organizations that achieve complementarity among their own absorptive capacity and the capacities of its supply network manage to obtain greater benefits from its orientation to open innovation.

This paper responds to the need to study innovation in the context of a supply network and respond to calls in the literature on open innovation and supply chain management for the need to study the moderating role of absorptive and desorptive capacity.

In innovation networks, firm innovation performance is affected by external tie strength and internal knowledge absorptive capacity. This study aims to empirically examine the path relationship between tie strength, absorptive capacity and firm innovation performance in Chinese manufacturing industries, thus enhance our understanding on the mechanism between innovation network and innovation performance.

The authors have conducted a survey among Chinese manufacturers in four industries (textile and garment, household appliance, IT and electronics and motor vehicle assemblers) that are located in North, East, Central and South China, respectively, with a valid response from 278 manufacturers. Structural equation model is used to analyze the results.

This study demonstrates that in Chinese Manufacturing industry, tie strength is positively related to innovation performance. The authors also find that absorptive capacity has a positive impact on innovation performance and it mediates the relationship between tie strength and innovation performance. Then, the authors analyze the effect of ownership, industry and sub-region, and the results show that in private firms and traditional manufacturers, and the firms located in North and Eastern China, tie strength has no direct effect on innovation outcomes, but it can influence innovation indirectly through absorptive capacity.

This study further supports that in Chinese guanxi culture, strong ties with other innovation partners can improve the firm’s absorptive capacity and thus improve innovation performance. The results also suggest that a firm’s absorptive capacity has a significant mediating effect on the relationship between tie strength and innovation performance.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between two types of open innovation (OI) strategies (OI breadth and depth) and innovation performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China. The study examines how firms’ absorptive capacity and government institutional support affect these relationships.

Survey data from 236 manufacturing SMEs in China were used to test the proposed model using hierarchical regression analysis.

The results show that both OI breadth and depth are positively related to innovation performance of SMEs. Moreover, this study finds that realized absorptive capacity serves as a mediator in the relationships between OI breadth and depth and innovation performance. The potential absorptive capacity and government institutional support moderate the relationship between OI breadth and innovation performance.

The effectiveness of OI strategies is significantly different among SMEs. One possible explanation is that SMEs adopt different types of OI strategies. Another is that a firm’s absorptive capacity and government institutional support may influence the effectiveness of OI. This study integrates these two possible reasons by investigating the effect of the interplay between different OI strategies, absorptive capacity and government institutional support on SMEs’ innovation performance. This study enriches the research on the relationships between OI strategies and innovation performance of SMEs in the Chinese context.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the influence of social capital on competitive advantage through collective learning and absorptive capacity.

The study carries out analyses based on structural equation modeling to measure the main constructs and test the hypothesized relationships among the variables. The primary statistical technique for assessing survey data collected from 358 Taiwan tenants is partial least squares analysis.

Collective learning and absorptive capacity fully mediate the relationship between social capital and competitive advantage. Moreover, social capital has a significant influence on both collective learning and absorptive capacity.

Tenant firms in industrial parks must develop effective management tactics for the nurturing of inter-firm relations to enhance collective learning and their absorptive capacity to acquire and exploit key strategic resources such as tacit and explicit knowledge. For specialized firms, close social interactions in specific contexts, mediated by collective learning and absorptive capacity to make up for their resource constraints, can heighten their competitive advantage.

By demonstrating the impact of social capital on competitive advantage in the specific context of industrial parks, whose artificial environment encourages and promotes close social interactions among tenants, this paper overcomes previous and contradictory findings regarding the relationship between social capital and competitive advantage. A key contingent factor is the mediating role of collective learning and absorptive capacity.