Digital absorptive capacity: developing an instrument

ABSTRACT

Studies have shown that it is fundamentally important for firms to acquire and exploit knowledge outside the firm in order to create new knowledge and innovate. The absorptive capacity literature has extensively documented organisational processes that allow firms to acquire and exploit external knowledge for new knowledge creation and innovation. However, our understanding of absorptive capacity has not been updated to match the reality of the digital world; thus, it remains unclear how advancements in digital technologies have transformed the underlying processes of absorptive capacity (i.e., knowledge acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation). This article builds on the extant literature on absorptive capacity and digital technologies through interviews with founders of today’s entrepreneurial firms, the conceptualisation of digital absorptive capacity, and the development of an instrument to operationalise this construct.

KEYWORDS:

• Absorptive capacity
• digital absorptive capacity
• digitisation
• digital technologies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14778238.2022.2139773

Notes

1. Information on firms and the interviewees is presented in Table 2 of the paper.

^2. Even though the paper was later retracted, we have included it as part of this research as the conceptualisation is useful to mention.

^3. Reliabilities are on the diagonal.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [435-2017-0515].