Communicating explicit and tacit knowledge within and across organizational borders: Their impact on absorptive capacity and competitive advantage

Abstract

Drawing on knowledge management and organizational learning, we address how tacitness and explicitness of the knowledge acquired from one's partner affect the way communication mechanisms help build the firm's absorptive capacity. We also examine the different roles the two absorptive capacity subsets play in the development of firms' competitive advantage when knowledge types vary. With a sample of 286 corporations in China, our structural model analysis shows that the type of konwledge does moderate the relationships between communication, absorptive capacity and firms' competitive advantage. This study contributes to the literature by empirically proving that the knowledge type is an important variable to consider in the study of firms' absorptive capacity. It also suggests that business practitioners should take the type of the knowledge their partners possess into consideration if they want to optimize their learning outcome.