Organizational determinants and idiosyncrasies of firms' absorptive capacity in a developing country context: preliminary results

Abstract

The paper analyzes the organizational determinants of Absorptive Capacity (AC) and its idiosyncrasies for firms from developing countries. Theoretically, it was proposed a "vicious cycle" of limited AC in Latin-American firms. Empirically, it was identified different determinants of Brazilian innovative firm's AC, according to knowledge sources used to innovate: Academic AC is built by external relationship and individual abilities of firm's researchers, while Market AC is determined by better internal knowledge diffusion. Both ACs are not affected by the expenditure in internal R&D, but by the expenditure in the acquisition of external R&D. Both results reinforce the argument of a limited AC in developing countries.