Absorptive capacity: a non-linear process

Abstract

Since the Cohen and Levinthal article on absorptive capacity was published, ‘the ability to recognize the value of new information, to assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends’ (p. 128) is seen as an essential competence for a firm’s long-term performance. However, the way absorptive capacity is actually implemented in firms remains relatively poorly known. The few existing works present absorptive capacity as an essentially linear process, and the way the different phases of this process are actually carried out remains understudied. In order to enhance our understanding of the way firms absorb external knowledge, we gathered data from 23 interviews of managers from three different industrial firms. Our results suggest that, far from being linear, the process displays several feedback loops, both within and between each phase of absorption. In this study, we enrich previous absorptive capacity models.

Keywords:

• absorptive capacity
• feedback loops in the absorptive process
• non-linearity of absorptive capacity

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amal Aribi

About the authors

Amal Aribi earned a Doctor of Management at University of Angers in France, where she also served as a researcher of The Angers Economics and Management Research Group (GRANEM). She served as teacher of HRM and Organizational Management at Kedge Business School (Bordeaux) in France. She is interested in studying how to improve firms’ absorptive capacity and the relationship between absorptive capacity, intellectual capital and HRM practices.

Olivier Dupouët

Olivier Dupouët is professor of Management Information Systems at Kedge Business School in France. His research interests lie in knowledge management and organizational learning.