The roles of absorptive capacity and cultural balance for exploratory and exploitative innovation in SMEs

By Everist Limaj, Edward W. N. Bernroider. Journal of business research, 2017

280 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study investigates whether balanced forms of organizational cultures moderate the effects of potential and realized absorptive capacities (ACs) to simultaneously generate exploratory and exploitative innovations. Using empirical survey data collected from 138 small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we applied partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM) combined with mediation and moderation analyses to test our hypotheses. Our results show that the effects of potential AC on organizations' exploratory and exploitative innovations are fully mediated by the organizations' realized AC. The positive effects of realized AC on innovation are contingent on the overall cultural balance of the organization, which, however, does not affect the strong link between potential AC and realized AC. We thus provide novel empirical insights into the multi-dimensional nature of AC and the importance of cultural equilibrium for both exploratory and exploitative innovation, which is of particular importance for ambidextrous SMEs facing dynamic markets.

Subfields: Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2de7f44681e0cc42614ab6b297ba185dd90d1e86

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

Citations in the corpus

Effect of Motivation, Leadership, and Organizational Culture on Satisfaction and Employee Performance (2020, background): “Organizational culture is a set of underlying assumptions and beliefs held by the organization's employees, then developed and passed down to overcome external adaptation and internal integration problems (Limaj & Bernroider, 2019; Miller, 2006).”