A Thematic Analysis and Critical Assessment of Absorptive Capacity Research

Absorptive capacity is one of the most important constructs to emerge in organizational research over the past decade. It has led to a stream of over 200 papers covering many contexts. This paper assesses the content and contributions of absorptive capacity research to date and explores its future directions. It begins by briefly summarizing Cohen and Levinthal's discussions of absorptive capacity in their 1989, 1990 and 1994 papers. Next, it presents a thematic analysis of absorptive capacity research. 189 papers from 12 leading journals and two recent conferences were coded and classified using an iterative process until agreement was reached among all three authors. This identified seven major themes in absorptive capacity research: definitions of absorptive capacity, knowledge characteristics, knowledge transfers, organizational learning, innovation, corporate scope, and alliances. The theory, methods and findings of key papers within each theme are then briefly discussed and three major problems with absorptive capacity research identified. First, the construct's assumptions are no longer being acknowledged, let alone questioned, and there have been few efforts to refine Cohen and Levinthal's definition. Second, it is increasingly used as a convenient catch-all-phrase to capture anything within the firm that relates to the acquisition, assimilation, or integration of knowledge. Third, there have been few efforts to explore the organizational processes which underlie each dimension of absorptive capacity (identifying, assimilating, and applying external knowledge). The paper closes with a discussion of future research that is needed to address these problems and to exploit emerging opportunities in absorptive capacity research.