Article ID: | iaor20071646 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 25 |
Issue: | 4 |
Start Page Number: | 510 |
End Page Number: | 524 |
Publication Date: | Jul 2006 |
Journal: | Marketing Science |
Authors: | Dutta Shantanu, Rajiv Surendra, Narasimhan Om |
Keywords: | knowledge management |
The rapid rate of knowledge obsolescence in many high-technology markets makes it imperative for firms to renew their technological bases constantly. Given its critical importance, excellence in renewal of technological base would serve as a dynamic capability. Drawing on past literature, we identify this dynamic capability associated with acquiring and utilizing external technological know-how with the notion of absorptive capacity (AC). We ask the following questions: (a) What would cause some firms to have a higher AC than others? and, (b) What is the impact of AC on a firm's profitability? We build a conceptual framework suggesting that marketing, R&D, and operations capabilities have a significant positive impact on a firm's AC. We test our framework on a data set of firms in high-technology markets. Using an econometric technique called stochastic frontier estimation, we infer the AC of firms from an observation of the know-how they actually absorb. We find that firm-specific capabilities significantly impact AC. Also, we find that AC has a significant impact on profitability and that this impact is moderated by the pace of technological change: the greater the pace of change, the greater the impact.