This paper explores absorptive capacity metaroutines in a financial organization that experienced a large-scale misappropriation episode. We selected an instrumental case and collected individual semistructured interviews, on-site nonparticipant observations, and documents to better understand the combination of absorptive capacity in organizational contexts. Findings revealed that the magnitude of organizational disruptions and time constraints influenced absorptive capacity metaroutines. The magnitude of organizational disruptions related to the intensity of required change for innovation adoption and the persistence of outcomes, while time constraints influenced the degree of involvement and cohesiveness of organizational members. In addition, findings showed that the combination of absorptive capacity metaroutines experienced asymmetries and had incremental and cumulative features. This work extends current theorizations of absorptive capacity conceptualized from a microfoundation perspective as a collection of external and internal metaroutines and provides a means to start understanding potential factors that influence the combination of absorptive capacity metaroutines. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, and suggestions for future research are offered.

Introduction

Absorptive capacity is “the ability to identify, assimilate, and exploit knowledge from the environment” (Cohen & Levinthal, 1989, p. 569e570) to meet organizational ends (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). Absorptive capacity has been investigated in several contexts including emerging markets (Bilgili, Kedia, & Bilgili, 2016), banking industries (Cepeda-Carrion, Leal-Millan,
Martelo-Landroguez, & Leal-Rodriguez, 2016), and scientific settings (Belderbos, Gilsing, & Suzuki, 2015) and has been related to organizational processes (Knoppen, Saenz,
& Johnston, 2011; Sun, 2010), innovation outcomes (Gebauer, Worch, & Truffer, 2012; Helfat, 1997; Hill & Rothaermel, 2003; Lichtenthaler & Lichtenthaler, 2009; Mariano & Walter, 2015; Mariano & Casey, 2015; Simonin, 1999; Tsai & Yang, 2015), innovative performance (Ali, Kan, & Sarstedt, 2016; Denicolai, Ramirez, & Tidd, 2016; Kim, Kim, & Foss, 2016; Tseng, Pai, & Hung, 2011), and organizational performance (Ben-Oz & Greve, 2012; Brettel, Greve, & Flatten, 2011; Lichtenthaler, 2016). Existing conceptualizations of absorptive capacity have pointed out its inter- and intra-organizational antecedents (Martinkenaite & Breunig, 2016; Volberda, Foss, & Lyles, 2010); discussed its mediating (Cockburn & Henderson, 1998) or moderating role in organizational innovative capabilities (Koza & Lewin, 1998; Tsai & Yang, 2015); distinguished between potential and realized absorptive capacity (Andersen
& Kask, 2012; Ben-Oz & Greve, 2012; Kang & Lee, 2016; Zahra & George, 2002), with recent empirical work confirming a linear relationship among the internal components of absorptive capacity (Daspit & D’Souza, 2013); attempted to operationalize the construct (Flatten, Engelen, Zahra, & Brettel, 2011; van der Heiden, Pohl, Mansor, & van Genderen, 2016); and theorized about the existence of complementarities between its internal components (Todorova & Durisin, 2007). Because the construct has significantly expanded over the years, several reviews have also been conducted to synthesize existing theoretical discussions and empirical contributions, focusing on a managerial (Lane, Koka, & Pathak, 2006), information systems (Roberts, Galluch, Dinger, & Grover, 2012), or knowledge management and intellectual capital perspective (Mariano & Walter, 2015; Senivongse, Mariano, & Bennet, 2015).