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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 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.

This study aims to examine the influence of the three dimensions of travel agents’ manager competencies – ability, motivation and opportunity seeking – on knowledge transfer and travel agents’ performance. In addition, the study investigates how employee’s absorptive capacity moderates the effects of managers’ competencies on knowledge received by the employees and moderates the effects of knowledge received by the employees on travel agents’ performance.

A positivist research philosophy was adopted with a quantitative approach, in which quantitative data were gathered based on questionnaires to tackle different stages of the study. To test the hypotheses, a self-administrated face-to-face survey of about 42 questions, launched on November 7, 2016, was used to compile response from top and medium management Category A travel agents operating in Egypt.

Based on a sample of 577 travel agents’ frontline employees, the results showed that the three dimensions of travel agents’ competencies have a positive effect on knowledge received by the employee. Findings further indicated that knowledge received by employee mediates the link between these three competencies and travel agents’ performance. The link between the competencies and knowledge received by the employee was found to be positively moderated by employee absorptive capacity. Moreover, these findings suggested that the relationship between knowledge received and travel agents’ performance is stronger when employees’ absorptive capacity is greater.

This study is bound by certain limitations that also provide fertile grounds for further research. First, the study examined how an employee’s absorptive capacity moderates the effects of managers’ competencies on knowledge received by the employees and moderates the effects of knowledge received by the employees on travel agents’ performance. However, innovation as a dependent variable can be investigated. Second, one limitation is that the study is restricted to Category A travel agents only in Greater Cairo. Third, examining the antecedents of ability, motivation and opportunity seeking to transfer knowledge is also important.

It is important for travel agents, owners, managers and employees to acknowledge absorptive capacity as a critical component for organizations to sustain, grow and compete. Travel agents can also take steps to develop their employees’ absorptive capacity. Doing so would further enhance the success of knowledge, employees and travel agents’ performance. Also, travel agents’ top management has to ensure their employees’ absorbing knowledge, identifying and recognizing external knowledge, processing and understanding it, combining it with existing knowledge and applying the new knowledge to commercial ends. Hence, the development of absorptive capacity contributes to a travel agent’s achievement of competitive advantage.

This study contributes to the literature by expanding the extant literature on knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity by investigating the influence of travel agents’ manager competencies – ability, motivation and opportunity seeking – for knowledge transfer in the Egyptian context. In addition, it investigates the direct effects of the three dimensions of travel agents’ manager competencies – ability, motivation and opportunity seeking – for knowledge transfer. Finally, the paper investigates how employee’s absorptive capacity moderates the effects of managers’ competencies on knowledge received by the employees and moderates the effects of knowledge received by the employees on travel agents’ performance

Because the mechanism of how knowledge sharing affects organizational innovation is still unclear, the study focuses on the relationship between knowledge sharing and organizational innovation performance, with a focus on mediating role of absorptive capacity and individual creativity.

On the basis of the knowledge base view and organizational learning theory, the study propose a model to verify the impact of inbound and outbound knowledge sharing on organizational innovation performance based on previous research. It also analyzed how these effects were mediated by individual creativity and absorptive capacity. The study collected 166 samples to verify the theoretical model.

Results corroborate that inbound knowledge sharing cannot directly promote organizational innovation performance, and absorptive capacity has a full mediation effect between inbound knowledge sharing and organizational innovation performance. Knowledge outbound sharing, individual creativity and absorptive capacity can improve innovation performance. In addition, absorptive capacity and individual creativity have direct and significant impacts on organizational innovation performance. Moreover, absorptive capacity plays a partial mediate role between individual creativity and innovation performance. Finally, this study discusses the policy implications of the study and describes possible future research directions.

The paper creatively divides knowledge sharing into inbound knowledge sharing and outbound knowledge sharing and verifies that knowledge sharing does not directly affect organizational innovation performance. The mediating role of absorptive capacity and individual creativity was analysis.

Absorptive capacity being an emerging field of research has been studied in different perspectives both in technological aspects and soft issues. Although an original study of absorptive capacity placed employees as playing pivoting role in the development of absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990), unfortunately, there are limited studies on behavior of employees toward this emerging construct. This study aims to explore the impact of employees’ behavior in the development of absorptive capacity. Specifically, impact of knowledge sharing, learning adaptability and organizational commitment on absorptive capacity has been evaluated in this study.

This cross-sectional study was conducted at the pharmaceutical firms of Pakistan. The data were collected through random sampling from middle managers as a unit of analysis of this study. The rationale of the unit of analysis is that the maximum information is handled/accessed by the middle managers in the perspective of Pakistan. The data were collected from 170 respondents on a five-point Likert scale with the response rate of 66.7 per cent. Data were collected from different genders and different age groups with different qualification levels.

All independent variables showed significant positive correlations with overall absorptive capacity (ACAP). At the same time, different relationships of all independent variables were found in different ways with different significant levels. The results showed that different strategies may be adopted to manage the external knowledge for competition in turbulent environment. For example, organizational commitment may be incorporated at strategy formulation only, whereas the Adaptability at both routine and strategy formulation stage. As all independent variables showed no correlation with Acquisition it is concluded that Acquisition is purely a routine function, and instead of coordination, the routine processes must be emphasized.

This study focused on the data from the middle managers of the pharmaceutical firms only. The results may not be generalized to the sectors. Another limitation is that the respondents of the study were middle managers. It was made intentional to see the impact of management aspects other than organizational mechanisms, as discussed by Cohen and Levinthal (1990) and Jansen et al. (2005) in their studies. The results on the basis of the data collected from other entities of the organization may differ. This is a cross-sectional study, and a longitudinal study may give different results.

Absorptive capacity has the capability to absorb new knowledge and plays an important role in the development of organizational processes to compete in the turbulent environment. It is dependent not only on technological infrastructure but also on the employees’ behaviors and attitudes. This study gives insights about the knowledge process activities and employment of human resource at each phase of absorptive capacity in relation to their behaviors toward knowledge process.

Development of organizational process with knowledge management plays an important role in the capacity building, which ultimately enhances social paradigm of activities.

Pharmaceutical companies in Pakistan acquire technologies from foreign countries and have very limited research and development of their own. As technology is upgraded by the foreign companies as a continuous improvement process, local firms of Pakistan are required to absorb the new knowledge with the same pace. The study highlights importance of human capital in the development of this capability.

This article explores the complementarity between leader encouragement of creativity and knowledge-sharing among peers in enhancing employee creativity in the hotel context. The authors further examine the role of absorptive capability in setting a contextual condition under which creativity affects employee performance.

A web-based survey and face-to-face interviews were a means of two-round data collection while using a partial least squares technique for model estimation.

An analysis of 277 employees showed that leader encouragement and knowledge-sharing are important for creativity to drive performance. At high levels of absorptive capacity, employee performance increases rapidly as creativity increases.

This article extends how the complementarity between leader encouragement and knowledge-sharing plays an important role in explaining employee creativity and performance under the boundary condition of absorptive capacity.

Organizational managers could embrace a future creativity–performance strategy by developing absorptive capacity with reward systems to optimize employee performance.

This article substantiates the role of leader encouragement and knowledge-sharing in enhancing the relationship between employee creativity and performance. The strength of this relationship is dependent on the positive moderation of absorptive capacity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of intermediate knowledge mechanisms on the participative leadership–employee exploratory innovation relationship using a distal mediation model.

Deploying a time-lagged questionnaire method implemented over four business quarters, data are generated from 1,600 responses in R&D units of Taiwanese technology firms.

The structural equation modeling results reveal that participative leadership is positively related to employee exploratory innovation; coworker knowledge and absorptive capacity partially mediate the relationship between participative leadership and employee exploratory innovation independently; and coworker knowledge sharing in combination with absorptive capacity partially mediates this relationship.

The findings contribute new knowledge on the relationship between participative leadership and employee exploratory innovation by uncovering intermediate knowledge mechanisms that augment this relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of middle managers (MM) in the knowledge-intensive environment as perceived by the employees, MM and principal decision makers (DM) in the context of the absorptive capacity process.

In this qualitative study, the data were collected from pharmaceutical companies of Pakistan by using purposive sampling and the results were analyzed based on the thematic analysis approach.

The results show that employees and principal DM have a strong agreement between them regarding the roles of MM; however, MM have contrasted views. Some of the roles were agreed to by all the respondents.

This study has focused on the roles of MM (common and conflicting) in knowledge-intensive pharmaceutical companies of Pakistan. The results of other studies on the roles of MM in the context of traditional and hybrid organizations may differ from this study.

The results of this study show the importance of role specificity of MM for the smooth absorptive capacity process. While dealing with complex knowledge structures in pharmaceutical companies, this study gives strong input to HR mangers and consultants and practitioners as they continuously handle complex knowledge process activities.

The study has explored the specific roles of MM by using the thematic analysis approach.

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.