CONSEQUENCES AND ANTECEDENTS OF ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY IN A CROSS-CULTURAL CONTEXT

Abstract

Continuous innovation is one of the key challenges businesses are currently facing, which makes organisational absorptive capacity (ACAP) — a firms ability to explore and exploit external knowledge — a highly relevant topic. This study addresses ACAPs consequences and antecedents in an international context by analysing data from 549 small and medium-sized companies in Austria, Brazil, Germany, India, Singapore, and the US First, we reveal that both potential and realised ACAP have an equally strong positive impact on firm performance around the world. Second, we assess that the relationship between organisational structure and potential ACAP is not moderated by national cultural values. Furthermore, we show that the role a formalised organisational structure plays with regard to realised ACAP is positively moderated by the national cultural characteristic of power distance and negatively by the national cultural trait of masculinity. In contrast, masculinity positively moderates the relationship between specialisation and realised ACAP. Overall, with our study, we advance research on the consequences as well as the antecedents of ACAP and provide managers with mechanisms to support corporate knowledge absorption and innovation generation throughout the world.