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This paper aims to investigate the micro-level antecedents of absorptive capacity (ACAP) based on the multilevel perspective of learning capabilities in asymmetric joint project engineering teams constituted by local employees and expatriates.

The authors integrated the micro-foundational and multilevel learning theories to delineate the individual and team dimensions of ACAP. Using structural equation modelling, the authors tested the hypothesized relationships among the underlying individual determinants and multilevel dimensions of ACAP. The data were collected from a sample of 248 local employees from 76 joint project engineering teams in the Nigerian upstream oil industry.

ACAP entails individual and team capabilities, which depend on prior experience and need for cognition. The creation of shared understanding is essential for the transition of an individual’s knowledge assimilation capability into team’s knowledge utilization capability.

This study contributes to extant understanding of the multilevel perspective of learning capabilities, i.e. ACAP in a knowledge intensive team like joint project engineering.

Agile manufacturing is largely dependent on the capabilities of its people to learn and evolve with change. However, while agile manufacturing uses e‐commerce enabled technology in a decentralized organizational setting, it remains unclear how these individual capabilities should be linked to other organizational resources to create an agile organization. Another important modern management research perspective is the internal resource‐based perspective, resulting in a phenomenon called competence‐based competition with renewed attention for competence management. Competence management comprises the management, building, leveraging and deployment of strategic and operational competencies, the causal relationships and linkages between them, and the way competencies are embedded in organizational and individual resources. In this paper, we explore the relation between agile management and time‐based competence management, and study its adoption in small batch discrete parts manufacturing environments with the help of a coarse fact‐finding survey research.

Microfoundations have become an effective approach for capability scholars to explore the heterogeneity of organizational results. Since the early pioneering work of scholars such as Felin and Foss, the microfoundations of strategic organization had not been extensively studied until 2010. The theoretical and empirical literature associated with the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities has developed rapidly. However, the diversity and fragmentation of micro-elements lead to a lack of a relatively consistent understanding of microfoundations, the study purpose is to aggregate the associated scattered terminology into a cohesive discussion.

A systematic literature review was conducted on research papers published between 2000 and 2022 using a hybrid methodology that included bibliometric and content analysis.

The authors suggest that this line of research can be divided into three stages. The study further develop a framework delineating the main components and mechanism involved in the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities, which in turn help us distill research gaps and opportunities for future work.

The authors construct a framework that can serve as a coherent research platform for further knowledge development. In the framework, the authors highlight that the research of group constructs, culture and leadership, data-driven topics are valuable for our understanding of the microfoundations of dynamics capabilities.

This study aims to focus on inter-firm collaboration, exploring the main capabilities that can make a business more or less open to collaboration; it also considers the role of both firm-specific and relationship-specific capabilities. The paper proposes a model that can be used to study how the combination of the two categories of capabilities determines a firm’s approach to collaboration.

Through a survey of high-end hotels in tourist destinations in Italy and the USA, this paper tests variable connected with firm-specific and relationship-specific aspects, using confirmatory factor analysis.

Firms with greater capabilities are less open to cooperation; weaker firms with fewer resources appear to be more inclined to cooperate, probably to gain access to resources and competencies they do not possess.

From a scientific perspective, this paper suggests an analysis based on both individual and relational capabilities when deciding whether to collaborate, while most studies based on a relational view just consider relational capabilities. The study could be enlarged to other countries and contexts.

From a practical perspective, it indicates the importance of accounting for different and sometimes diverging aspects when deciding to cooperate.

In terms of social implications, it shows that, apart from the relational capabilities they have, potential partners can decide not to collaborate.

The paper suggests a method of analyzing both individual and relational capabilities when deciding whether to engage in a collaboration. It shows that firms’ behavior does not necessarily depend on the firm’s relational capabilities.

The human element, especially its multilevel manifestation, has been overlooked in research investigating the antecedents of firm supply chain agility (FSCA). The purpose of this paper is to explore how a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation affect FSCA through individual capabilities and actions within the boundary conditions of individual identification with the firm and organizational work climate.

Following a multilevel approach and drawing on a cross-disciplinary reading of the literature, the authors analyze drivers and enablers of FSCA and advance a framework explaining the emergence of FSCA within the boundary conditions of transformational leadership, individual identification and organizational work climate.

The authors advance that relevant individual capabilities and intraorganizational actions underlie FSCA in the firms’ pursuit of realizing their strategic orientations as increased agile capacities. The effectiveness of individual capabilities and actions for the emergence of FSCA is contingent upon the extent to which managers identify themselves with their firm, transformational leadership and the nature of organizational work climate.

The original contribution of the paper is to explain the interplay between the multilayered attitudinal, behavioral and structural enablers of FSCA and incorporate the human element into the research on the antecedents of FSCA.

By using the lens of knowledge-based view (KBV) and focusing on individual loci of knowledge, the present study addresses whether marketing knowledge management (MKM) is rooted in individual dynamic capabilities (DCs) and consequently whether it has a close relationship with the three main DCs, namely, the ability to solve a problem (substantive capability); the adaptation to rapid changes (adaptative capability); and the ability to change the way individuals solve problems (change capability).

The present study aimed to examine the effects of MKM (the quantitative variable) on DCs (the quantitative variables). Drawing on the relevant literatures, the researchers have developed a model that defines the subjects of the empirical test. To do this, the authors opted for a hypothetico-deductive approach, which is commonly used in quantitative studies. The empirical analysis involved a linear regression and a sample of 105 managers of Italian companies operating in the knowledge intensive sector.

Substantive, adaptive and change capabilities were all positively correlated with MKM. The results indicate the significant need for individual DCs to improve business performance in terms of creativity, innovation, and flexibility in response to market changes.

The authors show that individual MKM has a strong relationship with individual DCs when the employees have the capacity to solve problems, adapt, and change. In turn, managers are strategically creative and imagine future possibilities in the international marketing sphere. This includes procedures and routines to learn in local markets. The study also stresses the fact that individuals represent the primary loci of knowledge.

This study aims to examine the literature on consumer financial capability. By analyzing the research trends, theories, definitions and themes, the literature on financial capability is synthesized, and agenda for future research is suggested. A framework is presented that portrays the antecedents as well as the outcomes of financial capability and their interlinkages.

Following a systematic approach, the review is based on 215 articles published during January 2007 and–March 2022, retrieved from Scopus. It presents the definitions and theories of financial capability, publication trends, influential articles, prominent authors, prolific journals and countries publishing on financial capability. Using bibliographic coupling, the intellectual structure of the topic is explored, along with offering a framework through content analysis.

The bibliographic coupling analysis identifies four major clusters of research themes and capability theory appeared to be the most prominent theory. The synthesis draws upon five conceptual definitions of financial capability. Based on the discussion, in this review, financial capability is defined as an individual ability to apply appropriate financial knowledge, perform desirable financial behaviors and take available financial opportunities for achieving financial well-being. A conceptual framework delineates the synthesized literature and propositions based on this framework and relevant research are proposed. Finally, directions for future research are discussed.

This paper is an attempt to offer a comprehensive synthesis of the scholarship on financial capability and its conceptualization. It further proposes an extensive future research agenda. The study has implications for financial services providers relating to retail bank marketing.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to explicate the role played by information technology (IT) in enabling managerial dynamic capabilities. By doing so, this paper seeks to address a critical theoretical gap regarding IT’s role in enabling dynamic capabilities (DCs). DCs are knowledge-intensive and information-intensive processes and play a crucial role in facilitating strategic renewal of firms operating in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous business environments. Although managers play a central role in the DCs framework, extant research has only focused on the role of IT in enabling firm-level and process-level DCs.

This conceptual paper uses the literatures on dynamic managerial capabilities, individual-level information system use, social capital, human capital, managerial cognition and technology-enabled learning to build propositions that link managerial IT use with the enablement of dynamic managerial capabilities.

This paper introduces a new construct called individual IT leveraging capability (IILC) and provides theoretically grounded arguments that link IILC with managerial social capital, managerial cognition and managerial human capital. It also explicates the relationships between managerial social capital, managerial cognition and managerial human capital and the dynamic managerial capabilities of sensing, seizing and reconfiguring.

The establishment of the linkage between IT and dynamic managerial capabilities extends the literature on the business value of IT. This work also adds to the literature on dynamic managerial capabilities by providing a theoretically grounded argument that IT can act as an antecedent of such capabilities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is arguably the first to theorize the role of IT in enabling managerial DC and thus addresses a critical gap in academic research literature.

The purpose of this study is to characterize how services present responsibilized consumers with well-being capabilities. This is done by drawing on structuration theory and literatures on responsibilization, social well-being and psychological well-being.

This paper is based on conceptual development and a qualitative interpretive study of value propositions in texts and images on websites of 11 different self-tracking wearables and applications.

This paper introduces the changing–coping–countering characterization to explicate different types of well-being capabilities that are represented in services. These capabilities represent different stances towards structures. This paper proposes and discusses how these capabilities can have different impacts on well-being on individual and collective levels.

This study is limited to the perspective of services in a self-tracking context. Further empirical research is needed to investigate well-being capabilities from consumer perspectives.

The proposed characterization can help practitioners in becoming more reflexive concerning their value propositions that relate to consumer well-being. This implies becoming aware of well-being discourses that shape and affect service development.

This paper provides a novel characterization for understanding the role of services in the context of responsibilization. It contributes to structural perspectives on the role of services in contributing to well-being.

This paper according to the logic of the “digital access divide--digital capability divide--digital outcome divide” aims to systematically discuss the impact of the digital divide on individual happiness in China, accounting for the variations that exist across different groups, as well as the corresponding mechanisms.

This paper presents cross-sectional analyses of the relationship between the digital divide and individual happiness in China. The analyses are based on data from the Chinese General Social Survey 2017, which academic institutions run on the Chinese Mainland. This database contains information on respondents' Internet access, skills and consequences of use, which can measure the digital divide of Chinese individuals at three levels.

First, individual happiness declined when they experienced the digital access divide in China. For the digital capability divide, the lower the usage skills, the more individual happiness declined. When analyzing the digital outcome divide, the greater the negative consequences, the more individual happiness declined. Second, the impacts of digital access, capability and outcome divide vary according to age, gender, education degrees, hukou, region and sub-dimensions. Third, the digital access and capability divide reduce individuals' happiness by lowering their self-rated social and economic status, whereas the digital outcome divide reduce individual happiness by lowering their fairness perception and social trust.

The authors believe that this is the first study to examine the impact and its variations among different groups of the three-level digital divide on individual happiness, as well as its mechanisms.