Dispositional and Contextual Antecedents of Individual-level Absorptive Capacity

• An overwhelming majority of past research has conceptually and empirically treated Absorptive Capacity (AC) at the organizational level of analysis. This exclusive focus on organizational level is problematic given the central role of individuals in developing AC. Adopting micro-foundations perspective, this paper probes into individual-level dispositional antecedents (i.e., "who you are") as well as contextual elements (i.e., "where you are") facilitating motivation for effective implementation of practices and routines that could build up AC. Based on Goal Orientation Theory and Componential Theory of Creativity, we develop and test our hypotheses using a novel dataset collected from individual engineers working at a high-tech manufacturing company. Our results are largely in line with our theoretical predictions.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

kon (subject category)

ref (subject category)