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This study aims to explore how the absorptive capacity of emerging market multinationals (EMNEs) facilitates increased acquirer performance in industry exploration and technology exploration cross-border acquisitions (CBAs).

The research context for this study is Brazilian EMNEs and their CBAs. The final database contains 101 CBAs.

The authors find that industry exploration strategies negatively affect financial performance, but technology exploration strategies have a positive effect. The acquirer’s absorptive capacity can exacerbate the negative effects, except in instances of technology exploration strategies, where there is a demonstrable benefit from the acquirer’s absorptive capacity.

The study contributes first by providing a more nuanced understanding of the effects of absorptive capacity on postacquisition performance, depending on the type of knowledge explored. Second, by drawing on EMNE learning perspectives, the authors demonstrate the versatility of absorptive capacity in emerging markets.

The relationship between knowledge and innovation is well established in the strategy and entrepreneurship literatures. However, little is known about how absorptive capacity – the firm's ability to acquire, assimilate, and use new knowledge – effects innovation in new firms. We build on extant conceptual arguments from scholars who assert that the concept of absorptive capacity can be delineated into a number of individual components, and we test the influences of each component on innovation using a sample of new firms in the Swedish telecom, IT, media, and entertainment sectors. We find that while all of the components of absorptive capacity influence innovation in new ventures, acquiring new technological knowledge and employing mechanisms for exploiting new knowledge have the greatest effects. Our results provide a direct empirical test of the linkage between absorptive capacity and innovation, and suggest that the effects of these components of absorptive capacity on performance are more complex than previously articulated in the literature. We conclude with implications for future research surrounding absorptive capacity.

Absorptive capacity, technological collaboration and servitization are analyzed to establish ways to overcome the balance between products and services in manufacturing companies. A fresh perspective is introduced by presenting a framework for innovation strategy, moving beyond product-based R&D.

The hypotheses are tested using data on Spanish firms in the high-tech chemical and pharmaceutical industries through ordinary least squares regression analysis. The sample consists of 112 manufacturing firms included in the Spanish Survey of Business Strategies.

The results show that absorptive capacity facilitates servitization and that technological collaboration moderates the relationship between absorptive capacity and servitization. The synergies between absorptive capacity and technological collaboration for servitization are recognized from the perspective of open innovation as a way of resolving the trade-off between products and services.

Future research should introduce more sources of collaboration by broadening the value chain perspective. Other approaches to innovation may also be considered, including relationships to process innovation.

The results can provide meaningful guidance for companies to determine the key opportunities of servitization driven by absorptive capacity, and the best ways to leverage open innovation and collaboration strategies to exploit such approaches.

This research enriches theories on servitization, open innovation and innovative behavior. Open innovation strategy should be linked to greater servitization activity and should support an open service strategy. This approach is crucial for building innovation capabilities through technological collaboration.

Analyzing the external environment, catching the opportunities that it offers, and detecting knowledge to innovate have become important antecedents of competitive, agile, and sustainable organizations that satisfy all their stakeholders including their employees. These characteristics are related to the absorptive capacity, that is, the ability of companies to value, assimilate, and utilize new external knowledge. The authors argue that at the individual level, these companies could influence the work engagement in their white-collar employees. Work engagement can be understood as the employees’ psychological connection with their work, an aspect that has gained special relevance in the knowledge-based economies of the twenty-first century. Thus, the aim of this study is to observe if the absorptive capacity of companies influences work engagement in white-collar employees. The Absorptive Capacity Scale (Flatten, Engelen, Zahra, & Brettel, 2011) and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2003) were administered through an online platform. Our findings from 203 white-collar employees in Turkish companies confirmed our assumption regarding the positive effect of absorptive capacity on employees’ work engagement. The results and implications are discussed.

This research explores perceptions of knowledge management processes held by managers and employees in a service industry. To date, empirical research on knowledge management in the service industry is sparse. This research seeks to examine absorptive capacity and its four capabilities of acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation and their impact on effective knowledge management. All of these capabilities are strategies that enable external knowledge to be recognized, imported and integrated into, and further developed within the organization effectively. The research tests the relationships between absorptive capacity and effective knowledge management through analysis of quantitative data (n = 549) drawn from managers and employees in 35 residential aged care organizations in Western Australia. Responses were analysed using Partial Least Square-based Structural Equation Modelling. Additional analysis was conducted to assess if the job role (of manager or employee) and three industry context variables of profit motive, size of business and length of time the organization has been in business, impacted on the hypothesized relationships.

Structural model analysis examines the relationships between variables as hypothesized in the research framework. Analysis found that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities correlated significantly with effective knowledge management, with absorptive capacity explaining 56% of the total variability for effective knowledge management. Findings from this research also show that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities provide a useful framework for examining knowledge management in the service industry. Additionally, there were no significant differences in the perceptions held between managers and employees, nor between respondents in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. Furthermore, the size of the organization and length of time the organization has been in business did not impact on absorptive capacity, the four capabilities and effective knowledge management.

The research considers implications for business in light of these findings. The role of managers in providing leadership across the knowledge management process was confirmed, as well as the importance of guiding routines and knowledge sharing throughout the organization. Further, the results indicate that within the participating organizations there are discernible differences in the way that some organizations manage their knowledge, compared to others. To achieve effective knowledge management, managers need to provide a supportive workplace culture, facilitate strong employee relationships, encourage employees to seek out new knowledge, continually engage in two-way communication with employees and provide up-to-date policies and procedures that guide employees in doing their work. The implementation of knowledge management strategies has also been shown in this research to enhance the delivery and quality of residential aged care.

The objective of this study is to analyze the process of reverse knowledge transfer (RKT) occurring in multinational companies (MNCs), examining whether headquarters' absorptive capacity and the human resource management (HRM) practices developed by the parent unit influence success.

The data were collected through a questionnaire completed by the human resource manager of multinational company (MNC) headquarters. The analysis has been carried out on a sample of 115 Spanish MNCs by using structural equation models (SEM).

The results indicate that a parent firm's absorptive capacity positively influences RKT and that, in turn, this absorptive capacity is greater if headquarters implement certain practices of employee staffing, training, participation and performance appraisal.

This study extends existing research on RKT by examining the absorptive capacity of headquarters. Its main contribution is to provide evidence that MNCs can improve their RKT through HRM practices developed by the parent unit. This is original because most studies on RKT focus on HRM practices used by subsidiaries.

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.

This paper aims to study the role of absorptive capacities in coopetitive alliances that involve leakages of sensitive private knowledge regarding firms’ production processes.

This paper uses a game theoretic approach to model a differentiated product market in which two firms asymmetrically informed about the economic value of a business opportunity must cooperate to exploit this opportunity. Under coopetition, firms gain access to their partners’ core knowledge as the result of inevitable leakages of information. Firms differ in their absorptive capacities, which affects their abilities to leverage this new knowledge outside the collaborative activity.

Firms with superior absorptive capacities are more likely to devise alliances whose purpose is to gain access to their partners’ core knowledge. This opportunistic behaviour does not disappear even if firms compensate their partners for the damages caused by this deceptive business practice. This paper also finds that a highly specialised product safeguards firms with limited absorptive capacities against these opportunistic behaviours.

This paper provides a theoretical analysis of the role that absorptive capacities and product specialisation play in influencing the emergence of opportunistic behaviours in coopetitive alliances. The theoretical analysis underscores the extent to which the risk of opportunism associated with the exploitation of a partner’s specific core knowledge outside the scope of the cooperative activity affects not only the nature and intensity of market competition but also the incentives to pursue coopetitive alliances.

This study examines green absorptive capacity as an important intervening variable that elucidates the relationship between green supply chain management (GSCM) practices (specifically, green purchasing, customer cooperation and investment recovery) and firm performance.

Drawing from the theoretical underpinnings of the natural-resource-based view theory and information processing theory, a research model is developed and tested using data obtained from 368 manufacturing firms in Ghana. Data analysis was conducted using structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that green purchasing, customer cooperation and investment recovery have a direct positive and significant effect on firm performance. Additionally, green purchasing and customer cooperation have a positive and significant effect on green absorptive capacity but investment recovery does not. Further, the results show that the paths from green purchasing and customer cooperation to firm performance are positively mediated by green absorptive capacity.

The study reveals to supply chain managers that green absorptive capacity is an important conduit through which firms can achieve enhanced firm performance from GSCM initiatives.

This study makes a contribution by integrating the absorptive capacity literature and green management literature and establishes green absorptive capacity as a mechanism through which GSCM practices enhance firm performance.

Management innovation is one of the most vital practices underpinning economic growth and is considered to be one of the fundamental components of gaining a superior business position in market conditions that are continually fluctuating. Drawing upon neo-institutional theory as well as absorptive capacity, the current empirical study unpacks the relationships between external institutional forces (i.e. regulative, mimetic and normative pressures) and management innovation through investigating the role of absorptive capacity as a mediator.

The research model is tested using survey data from Australian organisations. The study used Partial Least Squares (PLS), a component-based structural equation modelling (SEM) method, in order to perform the data analysis.

The results confirm that the various dimensions of institutional forces have diverse influences on management innovation. The authors found mimetic and normative pressures have positive influences on realised and potential absorptive capacity of an organisation. In addition, realised absorptive capacity mediates the relations between institutional forces and management innovation.

Dissimilar to preceding studies, this research shows that organisations not only innovate to pursue higher performance but sometimes strive for legitimacy. In addition, the significant associations between absorptive capacity and management innovation and the mediation role clearly signify that institutional forces and absorptive capacity play significant roles in the adoption of management innovation.