[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/08-010.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The configuration of internal and external practiced routines of absorptive capacity: a new perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Arie Lewin
  • Silvia Massini
  • Carine Peeters
Abstract
The fifteen years following the introduction of the seminal construct of absorptive capacity (AC) by Cohen and Levinthal (1989, 1990) have seen the proliferation of a vast literature citing the AC construct in over 1500 published papers, chapters and books and interpreting it or applying it in many areas of organization science research, including organization theory, strategic management, and economics. However, with very few exceptions, the specific organizational routines and processes that constitute AC capabilities remain a black box. In this paper we propose a routine based model of AC that also operationalizes the AC construct. We decompose the construct of AC into two components, internal and external AC capabilities, and identify the configuration of meta-routines underlying these two components. The meta-routines are expressed within organizations by configurations of practiced routines that are observable and measurable. The ability of organizations to discover and implement complementarities between practiced AC routines may explain why some firms are successful early adopters and most firms are imitators. Success as an early adopter of a new management practice or an innovation is expected to depend on the extent to which an organization designs and implements the configuration of its internal and external absorptive capacity routines.

Suggested Citation

  • Arie Lewin & Silvia Massini & Carine Peeters, 2008. "The configuration of internal and external practiced routines of absorptive capacity: a new perspective," Working Papers CEB 08-010.RS, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:sol:wpaper:08-010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/9137/1/cp-0050.pdf
    File Function: cp-0050
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arie Y. Lewin & Silvia Massini & Carine Peeters, 2011. "Microfoundations of Internal and External Absorptive Capacity Routines," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(1), pages 81-98, February.
    2. Gil, Nuno & Miozzo, Marcela & Massini, Silvia, 2012. "The innovation potential of new infrastructure development: An empirical study of Heathrow airport's T5 project," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 452-466.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    absorptive capacity; routines; capabilities; innovators; imitators.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sol:wpaper:08-010. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Benoit Pauwels (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cebulbe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.