Realized absorptive capacity and entrepreneurial universities’ organizational change: the role of process innovation practices

Abstract

Although essential to all institutions, organizational change is a complex and high risk activity. In this paper, we examine how organizations develop and implement capabilities to facilitate organizational change. Drawing on the dynamic capability perspective and a 'resourcing' synergy view, we investigate how realized absorptive capacity in terms of transformation and exploitation capability directly affects organizational change, and how process innovation practices act as an effective mechanism that link transformation and exploitation capability with organizational change. To distinguish our analysis, we focus on both an emerging organizational form and an emerging economy context. Specifically, on the basis of a questionnaire survey of 316 academics from entrepreneurial universities in Malaysia, we find that both transformation and exploitation capability are facilitators of organizational change. However, the relationship of transformation capability with organizational change is fully mediated by process innovation practices, while the relationship between exploitation capability and organizational change is partially mediated by process innovation practices. Our research therefore contributes to the dynamic capability perspective of organizational change and absorptive capacity by highlighting the importance of integrating organizational transformation and exploitation capability with process innovation practices in different ways to facilitate organizational change. Our findings and accompanying discussion on how process innovation practices can generate moves towards universities that are more entrepreneurial will also be of interest to university managers and policy makers.

A meta-ethnography on HEIs’ transformation into more entrepreneurial institutions: Towards an action-framework proposition

“…She also extends it, encompassing the Triple Helix model and combining it with the need for ‘dynamic capabilities’ (Siegel and Leih, 2018; Teece, 2018) to explain the meta-level process enabling organizational change. Therefore, the author’s proposition illustrates the innovation process, which recent evidence suggests ‘fully mediate[s] the transformation capability–organizational change relationship’ in HEIs (Zhang et al, 2019: 12). Nevertheless, the findings also suggest that the researcher’s proposition might be lacking a necessary negative iteration back to ignition to depict the risk of failed pilot experiments making an HEI backslide to its old institutional self.…”

Role of knowledge management in developing higher education partnerships: Towards a conceptual framework

“…Furthermore, the conceptual framework, first branch on the right‐hand side, identifies and presents a list of institutional factors that affect the application of KM in partnership development. Numerous studies (Al‐Youbi et al, 2020; Fullwood et al, 2019; Zhang et al, 2019) have highlighted that institutional policies and procedures may set artificial barriers or slow down the process of exchanging necessary knowledge related to HE metrics. For example, the institutional policies may not be very encouraging in supporting the exchange of knowledge related to marketing and recruitment or quality performance of students, thus having implications on student recruitment strategies and planning the appropriate infrastructure for student services.…”

“…Dedicating efforts to the creation and maintenance of partnership absorptive capacities is very important as it has a direct impact on knowledge embedment and application and contributes to the development of partnership's knowledge repositories. Zhang et al (2019) and Aliasghar et al (2019) discussed that institutional benefit from well‐established knowledge repositories is becoming more resilient in a very competitive market. The creation and implementation of absorptive capacities are challenging processes, due to the differences noted in terms of institutional culture and size, infrastructure, resources and the overall objectives of the collaboration.…”

“…Institutions would benefit by compiling a list of criteria that may seek to understand the impact of collaborative work on institutional and departmental performance, HE product and service enhancements, innovation and overall institutional infrastructure developments. Literature highlights (Aliasghar et al, 2019; Elezi, 2019; Gold et al, 2001; Lilles & Rõigas, 2017; Tiwana, 2002; Zhang et al, 2019) that assessing the absorptive capacities developed across partners allows HE executives to observe tangible results, build confidence and encourage a more supportive behaviour towards KM activities as partners can identify and experience the impact of collaborative developments.…”

Absorptive capacity: Um panorama da trajetória evolutiva de redes de pesquisas (1976-2020)

“…Furthermore, Zhang et al (2019) postulate that integrating transformative and exploitative capabilities with internal process innovation practices not only contributes to organizational change but also sheds light on why an integrative approach should be taken to explain organizational outcomes.…”