1. Department of strategic management & entrepreneurship
Cumulative? Opening the black box of absorptive capacity: A Meta-Analytical Review of the Micro foundations
University of London Birbeck
CIMR WORKSHOP, June 23rd 2017
L.J. Cosaert, H.W. volberda & J.S. sidhu

2. Literature on Absorptive Capacity
Introduction
Literature on Absorptive Capacity
GAP in Literature
Utilize and absorb ext. information (Adler, 1965; Cohen &Levinthal, 1990)
Reconceptualizations: relative AC (Lane & Lubatkin, 1996; Zahra & George, 2002; Todorova & Durisin, 2007);
Driver of innovation (Tsai, 2001); competitive advantage (Fosfuri & Tribó, 2008); aspiration levels (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990); firm performance (Tsai, 2001)
Importance antecedents is prior experiences & related knowledge(C&L; Argote et al., 2003; Van den Bosch et al. 1999)
AC has been treated as a black box!
Used as a dependent variable, using R&D expenditures as a proxy. However, absorptive capacity is actually a multi-dimensional and multi-level construct (Lane et al., 2006).
No understanding about the micro-foundations regarding individual organizational characters (Felin et al., 2012)
The scholarly understanding will be specifically increased if this is analyzed through the micro-foundations lens (Volberda et al., 2010).
No quantitative utilization of the accumulated extant research
Main Research question: “What type of antecedents enhance absorptive capacity most?

3. cumulative The premise of cumulative absorptive capacity
AC is cumulative (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990): e.g. production experience to reorganize or automatize processes
Memory development: accumulated prior knowledge enhances learning (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990)
AC history- or path- dependent; the lack of investment in a specific area of expertise early on may foreclose the future development of a technical capability in that area. (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990 pp. 128); natural trajectory (Nelson & Winter, 1982)
This seems all quite deterministic…
Is there still a role for management?

4. THE TAXONOMY OF the ANTECEDENTS
The antecedents of AC can be grouped into inter-organizational, managerial and intra-organizational antecedents (Volberda et al., 2010)
In this study, we expand the taxonomy
Antecedents of Absorptive Capacity
Type
Managerial Antecedents
Inter-Organizational Antecedents
Intra-Organizational Antecedents
Prior
Sub-Type
Mng. Human Capital
Mng. Social Capital
Mng. Cognition
Structural Dim.
Relational Dim.
Cognitive Dim.
Firm structure
ICT and R&D
Prior Related knowledge
Examples of mechanisms
Values
Education
Interest
Personality
Social network ties, network characteristics, relationships
Beliefs
Emotions
Regime
Mental activities
Network ties
Density
Hierarchy
Respect
Friendship
Trust
Norms
Language;
Narratives
Culture
Codes
Org. form
Centralization
Job rotation
IT usage
Integrated tech.
Communication
Prior related knowledge;
R&D Stock
R&D Com-muniites c

5. hypotheses
Hypothesis 1: Inter-organizational antecedents will be positively related to AC
Hypothesis 2: Managerial antecedents will be positively related to AC.
Hypothesis 3: Intra-organizational antecedents will be positively related to AC
Hypothesis 4: Prior experiences will be positively related to AC
Managerial Antecedents
Managerial Cognition
Managerial Social Capital
Managerial Human Cap
Inter-Organizational Antecedent
Structural Dimensions
Cognitive Dimensions
Relational dimensions
Intra-Organizational Antecedents
Firm characteristics
ICT and R&D
Prior Knowledge
Prior related knowledge H1 H2 c
Absorptive Capacity H3 H4

6. Meta-Analytical Techniques
Sample and methods
Meta-Analytical Techniques
Data Collection
Data derived from academic articles & research papers (03/ /2015)
Keywords include: absorptive capacity, knowledge acquisition, R&D etc
Outcome yields 130 articles, 2,000+ effect sizes and a total sample size exceeding 60,000 observations
Coding
Coding Protocols based on Lipsey & Wiley (2001)
3 Levels of Coding
Antecedents types, absorptive capacity, control variables
HOMA
Hedges-Olkin meta-analysis (1985): applied Fisher z-conversion to comply with the normality assumption
Inverse variance for importance of effect sizes (focus on precision)
Random effects model: conservative, variability due to population and sampling error

7. Antecedents of absorptive capacity

8. Antecedents of potential absorptive capacity

9. Antecedents of realized absorptive capacity

10. Conclusion: CUMULATIVE?
Managerial Dynamic Capabilities?
The importance of ICT and R&D is important across the dimensions of AC
Developing absorptive capacity:
Managerial: cognition (r= 0,365) & social capital (r = 0,340) have the largest effect sizes
Developing potential AC:
Inter-organizational: cognitive dimensions (r = 0,456) (cognitive distance, shared codes)
Managerial: cognition (r= 0,413)
Developing realized AC:
Inter-organizational: structural dimensions (r = 0,456)
Results show the importance of dynamic managerial capabilities (cf. Helfat & Martin, 2014)
Examples of future Research: Managerial intentionality (i.e. the ability to and intention to influence the evolutionary path of the firm) instead of focusing too much on prior experiences

11. Q&A and DISCUSSION
Theoretical contribution: determinism versus voluntarism
What are your key take-aways? / What do you think about the contributions?
What are the shortcomings of this paper?
What (meta-)questions would you be interested in to further explore?