TY - JOUR
T1 - Absorptive capacity
T2 - a process and structure approach
AU - Vasconcelos, Ana Cristina
AU - Martins, Jorge Tiago
AU - Ellis, David
AU - Fontainha, Elsa
N1 - Funding Information:
A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with the CEOs of all four companies, reflecting on their personal experience, on the company history and key strategic turnaround milestones, on the context of the evolution of the sector and on the impact of current economic context in their market. The use of CEOs as key sources of information provides a high-level strategic view of the companies’ trajectories and operations in their external environment and, thus, is the most useful perspective for the purposes of this study. In addition to the interviews with the CEOs of all four companies, we conducted interviews with similar high-level executives, more specifically the creative director and the managing director of δ Apparel and the quality controller at β Fibre. All four companies are family businesses, which impacts on the structure of executive decision-making and the profile of interviewees. The CEOs are either founders or direct descendants of the founders. In either case, they share a history of family links to the business sector, which granted them an extended network of contacts from which they extract useful learning. Another common feature is that the high-level executives are either close relatives or employees who have a transgenerational, long-standing affiliation with the company, which becomes their de facto extended family. The seven interviews were complemented with data obtained from visits to all the factories, following interviews with the CEOs, and from desk research. Interviews were conducted between June and July 2013, a period during which Portugal was under financial assistance and an adjustment programme designed, implemented and funded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in cooperation with the European Central Bank and the European Commission. The country’s economic situation at the time was characterised by a large negative internal balance, high unemployment, reduced external imbalance and both public and private high debt levels [41].
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2018.
PY - 2019/2/28
Y1 - 2019/2/28
N2 - The aim of this study is to understand and explain different dimensions of absorptive capacity and the strategies used in practice to realise it. The theoretical and conceptual contribution of the study lies in the adoption of a dual process and structure approach, aiming at identifying, respectively, how learning takes place and what learning takes place. The study is based upon a case study research design to explore the manifestation of absorptive capacity processes and its relationship to knowledge structures in four company case studies. The findings of the research indicate that knowledge acquisition, transformation and integration involve successive iterations of codification, abstraction and diffusion of knowledge in relation to product concepts, process requirements and problem-solving approaches. This relates to the capability to adopt, simultaneously, different trajectories in terms of knowledge exploration and knowledge exploitation strategies. The combined adoption of these different strategies enables both strategic and operational flexibility and underlies the successful realisation of absorptive capacity.
AB - The aim of this study is to understand and explain different dimensions of absorptive capacity and the strategies used in practice to realise it. The theoretical and conceptual contribution of the study lies in the adoption of a dual process and structure approach, aiming at identifying, respectively, how learning takes place and what learning takes place. The study is based upon a case study research design to explore the manifestation of absorptive capacity processes and its relationship to knowledge structures in four company case studies. The findings of the research indicate that knowledge acquisition, transformation and integration involve successive iterations of codification, abstraction and diffusion of knowledge in relation to product concepts, process requirements and problem-solving approaches. This relates to the capability to adopt, simultaneously, different trajectories in terms of knowledge exploration and knowledge exploitation strategies. The combined adoption of these different strategies enables both strategic and operational flexibility and underlies the successful realisation of absorptive capacity.
KW - absorptive capacity
KW - I-space
KW - knowledge exploitation
KW - knowledge exploration
KW - organisational change
KW - Absorptive capacity
KW - I-Space
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85047402991
U2 - 10.1177/0165551518775306
DO - 10.1177/0165551518775306
M3 - Article
SN - 0165-5515
VL - 45
SP - 68
EP - 83
JO - Journal of Information Science
JF - Journal of Information Science
IS - 1
ER -