Interfirm ties and knowledge transfer: The moderating role of absorptive capacity of managers

• Author: Bertrand V. Quélin,Nada Khachlouf
• Date: 01 April 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/kpm.1564
• Published date: 01 April 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Interfirm ties and knowledge transfer: The moderating role of

absorptive capacity of managers

Nada Khachlouf

1

|Bertrand V. Quélin

2

1

ICD Business School, Paris, France

2

HEC Paris, Paris, France

Correspondence

Nada Khachlouf, ICD Business School, 12 rue

Alexandre Parodi, Paris, France.

Email: nkhachlouf@groupe‐igs.fr

Through the lens of social capital perspective, this paper assesses how individuals'

interactions and their learning capabilities explain the transfer of good practices in

an interorganizational network. Primary data were collected from export consortia in

Tunisia through a questionnaire survey. The research underlines the impact of the

strength and the range of ties between managers. It is also found that managers'

absorptive capacity moderates the impact of the strength of ties. This study considers

the individual's behavior at the heart of the knowledge transfer process and suggests a

substitution effect between the strength of social ties and individual's absorptive

capacity.

1|INTRODUCTION

Interorganizational networks (IONs) are a fruitful area for providing

increased learning when carefully managed (Zaheer & Bell, 2005).

Numerous organizational scholars have recognized that social interac-

tions often play a supporting role within collaborations. For example,

social ties may facilitate the transfer of complex, ambiguous, and con-

text dependent knowledge and enhance information flows and com-

munication between organizations (e.g., Bell & Zaheer, 2007).

However, though the benefits of interorganizational embedded

relationships are well established (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998;

Tortoriello, 2015; Van Wijk, Jansen, & Lyles, 2008), embedded ties at

the individual level can also present challenges for a firm in a knowl-

edge transfer perspective. Recent works in both organizational theory

and strategy have sought to incorporate individuals more prominently

into the analysis of firms' capabilities and market exchange (Bermiss &

Greenbaum, 2015; Felin, Foss, Heimeriks, & Madsen, 2012). They sug-

gest that individuals in an organization, rather than organizational

structures or routines, may serve as the primary locus of knowledge.

They attempt to disentangle the true source of knowledge and value

creation within the firm. Despite these contributions, the role of indi-

viduals in interorganizational relationships remains far from clear. A

need does exist to specify differences between individuals on learn-

ing‐related aspects. In particular, the roles of social interactions and

learning capabilities in sharing knowledge during cooperation deserve

more attention.

In this article, we take a step in this direction by addressing the

way individual network features and individual absorptive capacity

can impact on the transfer of knowledge in interorganizational

relationships.

In this paper, we stress the importance of individuals' interactions

and their learning capabilities in explaining differences in the transfer

of good practices from partnering firms. This learning is bounded by

the cognitive limitations of actors, which Cohen and Levinthal (1990)

call the absorptive capacity of external information. A conceptual chal-

lenge in exploring the role of individual learning capabilities is translat-

ing an inherently firm‐level concept to the individual level. We argue

that in consortia, members transfer knowledge through social interac-

tions. We then expect that the level of transferred knowledge will be

moderated by the absorptive capacity of individual members. We build

and test a theoretical model linking the characteristics of social ties

between ION members, mainly the strength and range of these ties,

to the transfer of good practices between them. We also propose that

the impact of social interactions depends on the ability of members to

absorb external knowledge. We test this proposition on a sample of

export consortia inTunisia composed mainly of small and medium sized

enterprises (SMEs).

Export consortia are a specific form of strategic cooperation cen-

tered on the commercial promise of export promotion and are usually

formed by small‐and medium‐sized companies in order to increase

their stake in foreign markets. Although consortia projects have been

implemented for a long time, the phenomenon is not extensively

researched. Previous research has centered on coordination and

agency issues (e.g., Gulati & Singh, 1998), leaving aside the critical role

of social interaction in the success of export consortia. Empirical argu-

ments are particularly lacking.

Received: 9 February 2018 Accepted: 25 February 2018

DOI: 10.1002/kpm.1564

Knowl Process Manag. 2018;25:97–107. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/kpm 97