Knowledge Absorption in Organisations - Development of a Conceptual Process Model

Continuous change and a complex business environment challenge organisations to gather and leverage new knowledge, to innovate and broaden their competitive advantage. Gathering potentially valuable knowledge does not necessarily mean that other parts of the organisation will benefit from that knowledge. Knowledge exploitation will only occur when employees inside the organisation share new knowledge amongst its members, reshape, transform and then meaningfully integrate it with existing knowledge to enhance and create new processes, products and/or services. The ability of an organisation to acquire and assimilate external knowledge and then transform and exploit the knowledge within the firm is referred to as the Absorptive Capacity (AC). The absorption of knowledge can be facilitated by social connections with the external environment (e.g. customers, suppliers, universities and research institutions) and internally within an organisation, to share the externally acquired knowledge and ideas amongst employees. Current literature has not yet described and synthesised the entire process of knowledge absorption starting with the conditions that trigger the need for new knowledge, followed by the organisational factors influencing knowledge flow and -sharing, the prerequisites (antecedents) for effective knowledge absorption, through to the resulting organisational outcomes associate with enhanced knowledge absorption. The social networks that facilitate the acquisition and transfer of external knowledge and the internal networks required to exploit and absorb the knowledge within the organisation, are also important in this process. This paper provides a review of existing Absorptive Capacity (AC) and Social Networking (SN) literature and highlights the central and essential role of external (inter-organisational) and internal (intra-organisational) social networks in the process of acquiring, assimilating, transforming and exploiting (i.e. absorbing) knowledge in organisations. The various elements are synthesised into a comprehensive conceptual Knowledge Absorption Process (KAP) model that deepens our understanding of the absorption of externally acquired knowledge through external and internal social networks and highlights management interventions that will support this process and create competitive advantage for the business. The model is presented in this paper.