Coevolution of firm absorptive capacity and knowledge environment: Organizational forms and combinative capabilities

• 成果类型: Article; Proceedings Paper
• 署名作者: Van den Bosch, FAJ; Volberda, HW; de Boer, M
• 署名单位: Erasmus University Rotterdam - Excl Erasmus MC; Erasmus University Rotterdam
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.10.5.551
• 发表日期: 1999
• 页码: 551-568
• 关键词: micro- and macrocoevolution; absorptive capacity; organization forms; COMBINATIVE CAPABILITIES; knowledge environment; multimedia industrial complex

摘要

This paper advances the understanding of absorptive capacity for assimilating new knowledge as a mediating variable of organization adaptation. Many scholars suggest a firm's absorptive capacity plays a key role in the process of coevolution (Lewin et al., this issue). So far, most publications, in following Cohen and Levinthal (1990), have considered the level of prior related knowledge as the determinant of absorptive capacity. We suggest, however, that two specific organizational determinants of absorptive capacity should also be considered: organization forms and combinative capabilities. We will show how these organizational determinants influence the level of absorptive capacity, ceteris paribus the level of prior related knowledge. Subsequently, we will develop st framework in which absorptive capacity is related to both micro- and macro-coevolutionary effects. This framework offers an explanation of how knowledge environments coevolve with the emergence of organization forms and combinative capabilities that are suitable for absorbing knowledge. We will illustrate the framework by discussing two longitudinal case studies of traditional publishing firms moving into the turbulent knowledge environment of an emerging multimedia industrial complex.