论文摘要:
For nearly 30 years, absorptive capacity (ACAP) has been the bedrock of theories of innovation; and, a meta-analysis is necessary to glean insights from the rich empirical evidence to date and guide future work. We meta-analyze the antecedents and performance outcomes of ACAP using 241 studies. We find the firm size-ACAP relationship is positive for small firms but negative for larger firms; and the firm age-ACAP relationship is negative for mature firms and not significant for young firms. Our meta-analysis reveals that ACAP is a strong predictor of innovation and knowledge transfer, and that its effects on financial performance are fully mediated by these two outcomes. We also investigate factors that have been commonly considered to be relevant for ACAP-innovation relationship. We do not find breadth of external search and competitive intensity can significantly impact the ACAP-innovation relationship. We observe that social integration mechanisms, knowledge infrastructure, management support, and relational capability all have positive and significant impact on the ACAP-innovation relationship. We find that environmental dynamism has a marginally significant negative impact on the ACAP-innovation relationship. We also find that ACAP-innovation relationship is stronger when ACAP is measured by survey than when ACAP is measured by archival proxies.