Organizational Culture and Absorptive Capacity

At the present time, many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are confronted with difficult market conditions. These conditions involve, for example, increasing globalization, greater competitive intensity, advances in information and communication technology (ICT) and changes in organizational structures (cf. Argote, McEvily & Reagans 2003a, p. v, cf. Ebrahim, Ahmed & Taha 2010, p. 917, cf. Hall 2003, p. iii, cf. Picot, Reichwald & Wigand 2003, p. 2 ff.). As a consequence, SMEs must be able to quickly and flexibly respond to market changes to stay competitive.

The purpose of the model is to describe the absorption of external knowledge and to explain the influence of organizational culture to derive starting points for organizational-culture-driven control of external knowledge absorption. Furthermore, an empirical test of the model should be possible, so that the theoretically identified starting points for how a knowledge-oriented organizational culture should be designed to support the absorption of external knowledge can be realized in terms of their practical suitability.

The objective of the empirical analysis is to evaluate the model of SMEs’ external knowledge absorption. The overall research design to pursue this objective can be summarized as follows: In the previous sections, the hypotheses were derived from theoretical statements made in the literature on absorptive capacity and organizational culture and expanded to aspects of the theoretical approaches to organizational theory. An empirically testable model of external knowledge absorption in the context of organizational culture was then developed, which represents how the several dimensions of organizational culture are related to the acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation capabilities at the organizational level. The hypotheses about the relationship among the dimensions of organization culture and the capabilities of absorptive capacity that are represented in the model are the basis of the analysis of the research model in section 4. Figure 19 presents the structure for the empirical analysis of the research models.

This section concludes this thesis with an overview of its findings and contributions to management and research along with its implications for management and research. The first section 5.1 begins with an overall summary of this thesis and its contribution to management and research. The second section 5.2 addresses the implications for management with respect to trust, collaboration, openness and learning receptivity, which are the dimensions of organizational culture that are relevant to the support of absorptive capacity. The third section 5.3 discusses the limitations of the investigation along with further research needs.