Organizational Citizenship Behavior and the Enhancement of Absorptive Capacity

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-2016

Department

Management and International Business

Abstract

Firm-level absorptive capacity has been conceptualized as the capability of the firm to identify, assimilate/transform, and exploit new knowledge. Despite the fact that the role of individuals strongly influenced the original conceptualization of the construct, the role of individuals in developing organizational absorptive capacity has been largely ignored. Meanwhile, studies have shown that individual-level behaviors known as organizational citizenship behaviors are related to indicators of organizational performance, yet there have been relatively few theoretically-based arguments explaining this relationship. In this paper, we articulate a model that depicts how the organizational citizenship behaviors of individuals enhance a firm's absorptive capacity. Specifically, we propose that citizenship behaviors moderate the relationship between routines and processes and the exploratory, assimilative, transformative, and exploitative learning capabilities that comprise organizational absorptive capacity. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publication Title

Journal of Business Research

Volume

69

Issue

10

First Page

3981

Last Page

3988

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