The concept of absorptive capacity remains a large stream of research since its introduction by Cohen and Levinthal in 1989. Defined as the “ability to recognize the value of new information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial...
moreThe concept of absorptive capacity remains a large stream of research since its introduction by Cohen and Levinthal in 1989. Defined as the “ability to recognize the value of new information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends” (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). They also mentioned that “these abilities collectively constitute what we call a firm’s, absorptive capacity” and they stay capital to innovative capability of an organization. The absorptive capacity, a key factor for strategic management, sustains the competitive advantages of an organization. But, even the number of growing studies and articles on this topic, we know little about how it appears and its development. These questions remain unresolved. The topic of this dissertation concerns these last two points: how appears the absorptive capacity and how to develop it. We first see that the current suggested models show some difficulties to operationalize the concept. As per Lane, Koka and Pathak (2006) review, most...