Organizational Culture and Absorptive Capacity

Download or read book Organizational Culture and Absorptive Capacity written by Dorothée Zerwas and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2014-04-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Firms are increasingly collaborating with outside partners to access external knowledge that will enable them to successfully innovate and remain competitive in the marketplace. To apply external knowledge, they must have a distinctive capacity to absorb knowledge. One of the main influencing factors for absorptive capacity is a knowledge-friendly organizational culture, because the knowledge absorbing behavior of individuals can be better coordinated through implicit values and norms than through structural coordination instruments. When focusing on an organization’s overall behavior, it is important to investigate in detail how a knowledge-friendly organizational culture influences absorptive capacity. Therefore, the author analysis the relationship between organizational culture and absorptive capacity and shows how a knowledge-friendly organizational culture should be designed to support the absorption of external knowledge in SMEs.