Search Results (5)

While prevalent in enterprise practice, business development (BD) activities have garnered limited attention within academic circles, leading to a noticeable dearth of discussions regarding their comprehensive understanding and the contemporary research landscape. Previous research has underscored the pivotal role and importance of business development activities in generating new growth opportunities and enhancing dynamic capabilities for enterprises. This article seeks to bridge this academic gap by synthesizing six decades of research literature on enterprise business development activities and tracing the progression of its research trajectory to uncover its complete narrative. Its contributions are manifold: firstly, we intensified the foundational elements of business development research by conducting a meticulous examination of various perspectives and providing insights into former ambiguities surrounding crucial aspects; secondly, it elucidates how contextual factors influence the emergence and evolution of enterprises’ business development activities, highlighting its research significance across different eras; thirdly, it conducts a comprehensive exploration of various research streams within business development and their nuanced interactions across key dimensions. Through these endeavors, this study aims to enrich academic discourse in the domain of business development, establishing a robust academic foundation for subsequent research. Full article

Digitalization is essential for supply chain (SC) systems to thrive in the extremely dynamic and competitive business environment of the present day. The purpose of this study is to examine the role and the importance of absorptive capacity (ACAP) on supply chain innovation performance (SCIP), mediated by digital capability (DCAP), supply chain resilience (SCR), supply chain agility (SCA), and digital innovation (DI). The study has been designed to empirically investigate the hypothesized relationships on a sample of 116 firms across industries in Saudi Arabia, using a partial least-squares-based structural equation model (PLS-SEM). Based on the findings, all the hypothesized paths are supported, justifying that ACAP positively and significantly impacts DCAP, SCA, and SCR. Moreover, SCA and SCR partially mediated the relationship between ACAP and SCIP. This study contributes to the resource-based view (RBV) and a dynamic capability (DC) theories by examining how the innovation of digital technologies affects SCIP, providing empirical support to the ACAP and SCIP interaction through numerous mediators to develop SCIP, from which also many practical implications emerged. For instance, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses must improve their SC performance by building and integrating their ACAP to make the most of their digital-platform-based dynamic capabilities. Full article

Knowledge absorptive capacity (ACAP) is a key dynamic capability that boosts business innovation, particularly in developing economies. However, scarce studies focus on ACAP and technological innovation (TI) in the context of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, this study aims to examine the effects of two different types of knowledge absorptive capacities to generate TI in the context of the Mexican manufacturing industry and determine whether realized absorptive capacity (RACAP) mediates the relationship between potential absorptive capacity (PACAP) and TI. This analysis was carried out through an empirical study of predictive type and quantitative approach. A survey-type questionnaire was randomly applied to a sample of 249 SMEs. The survey confers 200 managers’ opinions on the manufacturing industry in Mexico. The outcomes obtained through the variance-based structural equations (PLS-SEM) approach revealed that PACAP significantly influences RACAP, whereas, RACAP does impact TI and has a full mediating effect on the relationship between PACAP and TI. Nevertheless, although the significant direct effect of PACAP on TI is not verified, this research demonstrated the significant indirect effect of PACAP on TI. The findings reveal important implications for managers and decision-makers who must direct their strategies and ensure that the external knowledge acquired is assimilated by their employees so that PACAP will result in the transformation and exploitation of the internal and external knowledge acquired (RACAP), converting it into new products and processes. Full article

Organizational resilience (OR) has been studied as an important construct for maintaining an organization’s sustainability in today’s dynamic business world. However, the exact way to systematically achieve OR in real organizational settings is still unknown. In this paper, the scholars elucidate how OR can be fostered by developing knowledge absorptive capacity based on the knowledge-based view and dynamic capability theory. The paper highlights the significance of knowledge resources for a firm’s survival nowadays and provides conceptual clarity of how a firm’s ACAP could reinforce fostering OR. Thereby, this review fills the knowledge gaps of previous studies. Based on the review corpus, scholars also address other prominent antecedents for nurturing OR, such as leadership styles, dynamic capabilities, organizational learning, unlearning, networks, and social capital. Lastly, a conceptual model was developed for future organizational studies. In addition to the aforementioned contributions, the study’s novelty also lies in the review method, which is systematically conducted in an integrated manner by combining a bibliometric analysis and a scoping review. Furthermore, the study analyzes a more expansive database that includes 823 documents and covers documents published more recently, from 1992 to 2021. Full article

Due to a variety of barriers to develop innovation, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) find it necessary to collaborate with external sources of knowledge. The current study analyses the collaboration between SMEs and academia over an open innovation setting in Mexico. An absorptive capacity (ACAP) approach has been applied to understanding the process of developing new knowledge for achieving innovation. A two-part questionnaire was developed with the aim of assessing the ACAP of a new joint research unit. Data was collected from a local group of SMEs that collaborated as dyads with academia supported by a government program of innovation in Mexico. The result shows that there was a moderate potential and realized ACAP in the sample; these results are mutually related with both parts of the questionnaire which supports our findings. In conclusion, exploitation of new knowledge is a complex dimension for creating value from collaboration, which makes the outcome difficult to measure using traditional means. It can be argued that exploiting new knowledge for innovation is an iterative process of learning when exploring new sources of knowledge from academia. Full article