The Co-construct/ Co-evolving Process between Organization’s Absorptive Capacity and Enterprise System Practice under Changing Context: The Case of ERP Practice

Abstract

Long term sustainability in a competitive and changing environment requires an organization to continuously learn and adapt. The ability to access and use new knowledge is contingent on the organisational absorptive capacity (AC). In this paper, we focus on how an organization’s absorptive capacity and its enterprise system practices develop and co-evolve over time. Analysing a fifteen years’ ERP practice in an organisational context, this study synthesizes a new AC analysis framework that takes into account the dynamic nature of AC. This high-level analysis coupled with a longitudinal view resolves inconsistent results between current AC studies and suggest further directions for organisational AC research.