مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

If firms with superior market knowledge perform better, what is a key performance indicator of the firms’ being more knowledgeable in the most useful fashion? Many answers exist to this question. However, key performance indicators must explain the source of knowledge, identify the use of knowledge, and accommodate the context specific to the firm. Considering these criteria, which construct should one use as a key indicator to define the firms’ smartness? An even bigger dilemma arises when two similar theories collide on the issue.

Absorptive capacity (ACAP) is a central construct in several research areas in organizational studies. Researchers propose several conceptual models of ACAP(Camison & Fores, 2010; Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). Zahra and George (2002) reformulate a term “ACAP” and further broaden the definition to be a set of organizational routines and strategic processes by which firms acquire, assimilate, transform, and apply knowledge to gain and sustain competitive advantage. Researchers widely use these four dimensions of ACAP to empirically test ACAP’s in- fluences on a variety of product and firm performance outcomes (Atuahene-Gima, 1992; Jansen, Van den Bosch, & Volberda, 2005; Lichtenthaler, 2009). ACAP is evidently an indicator of firm performance and seems to fit the criteria as mentioned above, hence can one conclude that a firm with higher ACAP will be smarter than the others?Unfortunately, the answer remains unclear. Most of the past ACAP literature does not pay much attention to the importance of context specific effects of ACAP. In particular, research studies mainly focus on R&D context rather than marketing context when studying ACAP. Besides technological knowledge, market knowledge—customer and competitor intelligence—is a critical component of a firm’s ACAP in a free market economy since a firm’s central principle and driving force is a competition (or, in other words, the intensity of the rivalry between sellers for the demand of buyers or customers; Dickson, 1992).

Thus, firms that are most alert to learn directly from competitors’ moves and strive hardest in their search for more efficient and effective ways to serve their customers’ needs will be the most competitive in the market (Dickson, 1992). Significantly, firms with customer and competitor intelligence ACAP can apply and commercialize opportunities for the use of technological knowledge in creating new products, improving quality, or developing process innovation (Teece, 2007; Van den Bosch, Volberda, & de Boer, 1999).