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This paper aims to explore the relationship between top management team bricolage and performance and also examines unit ambidexterity's mediating role. More essentially, to understand the black box of organizational knowledge dynamism, a multilevel moderated mediating model is established by exploring the effects of two firm-level moderators, namely, potential absorptive capacity and realized absorptive capacity.

To test the cross-level moderated mediation model, this study used multisource data from 90 R&D units in 45 Taiwanese manufacturing firms through two-wave surveys and retrieving the archival data for assessing unit performance.

This study’s evidence revealed that unit-level ambidexterity mediates the effect between firm-level top management teams’ (TMT) bricolage and unit-level performance. This study also found that firm-level potential absorptive capacity positively moderates the effect between firm-level TMT bricolage and unit-level ambidexterity. Moreover, firm-level realized absorptive capacity strengthens the indirect relationships between firm-level TMT bricolage and unit-level performance via unit-level ambidexterity. The findings shed light on how and why TMT bricolage influences unit ambidexterity and performance in knowledge-intensive sectors.

This paper adds to the existing knowledge-based theory literature by disentangling the association between top management team bricolage and unit performance and identifying the pivotal role of absorptive capacity at both the firm and unit levels.

Digital start-ups have limited resources. With the demands of rapid growth, digital start-ups need to rely on their ability to explore external knowledge and exploit it into swift innovation. Developing absorptive capacity is an alternative to overcome this difficulty. This study aims to demonstrate how the potential and realized an increase in absorptive capacity enables organizations to innovate moderated by structural ambidexterity. Empirical evidence places more emphasis on the impact of absorptive capacity on innovation but still leaves the “black-box” question of innovation and how potential absorptive capacity (PACAP) can achieve realized absorptive capacity (RACAP).

This study tests, with a structural equation model, samples collected from 143 digital start-ups in Indonesia.

The finding of this study suggests that PACAP influences the ability to innovate only if RACAP mediates it and structural ambidexterity positively moderates the relationship between these two variables.

First, this study uses digital start-up organizations as respondents. Second, this study explores the role of the structural ambidexterity that moderates the relationship between PACAP and RACAP manifested in digital start-ups organizations that are identical to temporary companies with limited resources. Third, digital start-ups have a fast-growth life cycle, unlike regular companies. Finally, the validated scale is based on data collected entirely from digital start-ups located in Indonesia, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to other industry contexts.

Start-ups suffer from the ability to innovate that increases their propensity to fail. They overcome this failure by increasing the absorptive capacity of the founding team to improve their ability to innovate. Because of limited resources available at digital start-ups, the flexibility of their management style can overcome these barriers, allowing the pursuit of both knowledge exploration and exploitation in a balanced way.

Most of the studies explained that the ability to innovate comes from absorptive capacity. In fact, they do not explore PACAP and RACAP and their relationships. Moreover, the studies also indicated that the contextual ambidexterity moderated PACAP and RACAP. Meanwhile, digital start-ups in this study revealed that structural ambidexterity with two dimensions, i.e. shared value, and behavioral integration, enables and positively moderates the relationship between PACAP and RACAP.

This paper explores the relationships between firm absorptive capacity, novel business model design (NBMD), product differentiation strategy and performance in a transition economy.

The study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze firm-level data from a unique sample of Albanian manufacturing and service firms.

The study shows that absorptive capacity enables and shapes the NBMD that, in turn, leads to performance gains. The authors also find that the NBMD capacity mediates the impact of realized absorptive capacity on performance, whereas product differentiation strategy moderates the relationship between new business model and performance.

All variables were measured based on a self-assessed scale leading to potential method bias. Also, based on relevant literature, the study focuses on only one type of business model (BM) design.

Since dynamic capabilities are the foundation of NBMD, firms should invest carefully in developing such capabilities. Thus, the study results provide an integrative framework for understanding the role of absorptive capacity in NBMD adoption and for explaining the relationship between NBMD adoption and performance, an aspect that helps organizations in a dynamic environment.

This study strives to investigate the relationships between absorptive capacity, business model design, product strategies and performance by answering the call of Teece (2018) to “flesh out the details” of such relationships.

The COVID-19 pandemic and recent disruptive events are affecting firms’ operations and supply chain networks on a large scale, causing disturbances in supply, demand, production and logistics activities. Although supply chain resilience (SCR) research has received large attention in recent years, the purpose of this paper is to offer an original contribution by exploring how complex configurations and interactions between SCR strategies and capacities can lead to resilience.

This study investigates the configurations of SCR strategies and capacities using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis.

First, the findings reveal different SCR strategy configurations through the lens of absorptive, reactive and restorative capacities to achieve resilience. Second, this study applies the contingent resource-based view (CRBV) perspective to interpret how organizations can achieve resilience before, during and after a disruptive event. Third, it offers an analysis of different groups of organizations, based on the adoption of different SCR strategies and capacities.

This study identifies a set of equifinal SCR strategies and capacity configurations that can be implemented to cope with a disruptive event and lead to resilience. It also enriches the research addressing the consecutive phases of SCR investments, developing the CRBV perspective. In our results, five solutions describe organizations that invest in absorptive capacities, representing an ex ante readiness.

This study explores the different learning practices of Chinese incubators in Chongqing and Chengdu and delves into how these “learning huddles” influence incubatees' absorptive capacity (the ability to apply knowledge) to improve their chance of success (sustainable growth).

This explorative study uses a qualitative case study approach by means of semi-structured interviews with business incubation managers and incubatees across three business incubators in Chengdu and Chongqing. The data are transcribed, coded and analyzed using an analytic map for the explanation of building and reflecting on the theoretical propositions, leading to a further understanding of the “learning huddle” mechanism.

The study finds that incubatees perceive that their absorptive capacity is increased through vicarious informal learning practices that promote access to networks and thereby builds social capital to improve their likelihood of success.

This study has limitations in sample size and design. The explorative case study approach uses a nonrandom case selection of three incubators in Chongqing and Chengdu and has a limited number of interviewees, which may lack representation of the general Chinese business incubation population and may not sufficiently be generalized beyond the sample itself.

These findings have important implications for business incubation programs. Business incubators that build learning huddles (networks) create a nurturing shared learning environment, which is suitable for incubatees to collectively absorb knowledge at the early stage of their life cycle and improve their likelihood of sustainable growth.

Since this study is limited to a Chinese context, it is also hoped that future researchers use the typology of business incubator learning practices to explore cross-culture variables, as these may influence the business incubation operations and performance.

This study adds to the discussion on how collective learning practices facilitate absorptive capacity and build social capital, which in turn improves incubatees' chance of sustainable growth and as such the authors hope that the learning practice's typology and how incubatees determine their success stimulates further research for measuring the likelihood of incubatees sustainable growth.

Countries in Africa have a common goal policy of industrialisation that is expected to be driven by investing in innovation that yields efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the technical efficiency effects arising from innovation inputs including internal R&D, human capital development (HCD), and foreign technology adoption in manufacturing firms in Africa.

This study uses cross-sectional firm-level survey data from the 2013 World Bank Enterprise Survey and the linked 2013 Innovation Follow-up Survey. A heteroscedastic half-normal stochastic frontier is used for analysing the technical efficiency effects of innovation inputs of 418 firms.

This study reveals that internal R&D, and foreign technology have negative effects on technical efficiency. Notwithstanding, the combination of foreign technology and internal R&D, and foreign technology and HCD reinforce each other’s effects on technical efficiency.

This study provides evidence that whereas individual innovation inputs may not yield positive efficiency outcomes, the combination of absorptive capacity enhancing inputs comprising internal R&D and HCD with foreign technology is vital for enhancing technical efficiency in manufacturing firms in Africa. This study offers important lessons for managers in manufacturing firms in Africa.

This study is virtually the first to investigate the relationship between innovation inputs and efficiency in Africa. This study demonstrates that investing in foreign technology in isolation from absorptive capacity enhancing innovation inputs diminishes efficiency. HCD and internal R&D are imperative for building absorptive capacity that enhances efficiency outcomes arising from foreign technology.

The purpose of the study is to investigate how the processes of exploration and exploitation have developed in parallel in the literature of organizational ambidexterity and organizational learning, since James March published his seminal paper in 1991. The goal of the paper is to provide a synthesis of exploration and exploitation based on the two areas of literature.

The study is conceptual and no empirical data have been used.

The study advances current understanding of exploration and exploitation by building a new model for organizational ambidexterity that takes into account multiple levels of learning, perspectives from absorptive capacity and inter-organizational learning.

The study’s novelty lies in the creation and discussion of a synthesis of exploration and exploitation stemming from organizational ambidexterity and organizational learning.

The authors examine the factors affecting households' resilience capacities and the impacts of these capacities on household consumption and crop commercialization.

The authors use panel data of 1,648 households from Thailand collected in three years, 2010, 2013 and 2016. The authors employ an econometric model with an instrumental variable approach to address endogenous issues.

The study results show that the experience of shocks in previous years positively correlates with households' savings per capita and income diversification. Further, a better absorptive capacity in the form of better savings and a better adaptive capacity in the form of higher income diversification have a significant and positive influence on household expenditure per capita and crop commercialization.

Development policies and programs aiming to improve income, increase savings and provide income diversification opportunities are strongly recommended.

The authors provide empirical evidence on the determinants of resilience strategies and their impacts on local food commercialization from a country in the middle-income group.

The paper aims to explore the knowledge management and innovative outputs (IO) of university-based technology business incubators funded by the Department of Science and Technology in the Philippines.

The respondents, which include heads, managers, coordinators, and staff,were reached out via email using a database. The instrument was generally adopted from various related studies in the literature. Data were analyzed quantitively using partial least squares – structural equations modeling.

The main findings reveal that the mediated relationship between potential absorptive capacity (PACAP), realized absorptive capacity (RACAP) and IO explained 38.7% of the variance both predicted by PACAP and mainly explained by RACAP. Among new organizational antecedents measured, slack resources and willingness to cannibalize did not predict PACAP, while tolerance for failure and external openness predicted PACAP. Consequently, PACAP and RACAP positively mediated the relationship between significant organizational antecedents and IO.

The validation of the positive and significant link of absorptive capacity (ACAP) and innovation with an emphasis on the Philippine context. The study pointed out the unidimensionality of PACAP and RACAP as a single ACAP variable and not two separate constructs.

The authors examine the association between infrastructure and a household's resilience capacity against shocks and the impacts of a household's resilience capacity on household consumption and poverty.

The authors use panel data (collected in 2010, 2013 and 2016) from 1,698 households in Thailand and 1,701 households in Vietnam and employ an instrumental variable approach.

The authors find that transportation and information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure help improve households' absorptive capacity in coping with shocks. Furthermore, this capacity can prevent households from reducing consumption and falling into poverty.

Rural development policies should attend to transportation and ICT infrastructure.

The authors establish empirical evidence on the association between infrastructure and a household's resilience capacity and the impact of resilience capacity on poverty.