Internal Processes of Absorptive Capacity: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Directions

It has been a quarter of a century since 1990, when Cohen and Levinthal first coined the term "Absorptive Capacity" as a firm's ability to acquire, assimilate, and exploit external valuable knowledge and apply it to innovative performance. Since then, the construct has been addressed and developed by a tremendous amount of theoretical and empirical research studies aiming to clarify its capabilities and mechanisms. However, much of the inner capabilities of the Absorptive Capacity construct remain a black box due to a lack of cumulative and cohesive research. To provide clarity to the direction of future research studies in the Absorptive Capacity domain, we conducted a systematic literature review of 156 papers retrieved primarily from the EBSCO database. We mainly focused on Absorptive Capacity internal capabilities with regard to the processes of acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation. The analytic results highlight areas of improvement and provide direction for fruitful future empirical contributions to the Absorptive Capacity construct.