Individual-level absorptive capacity: Unveiling the interplay between dispositions and work context
研究了员工个体特质（认知需求、主动性人格）与工作情境（时间压力、自主性）如何共同影响其吸收新知识的能力，基于646名知识密集型员工的调查数据。
While extant literature conceptually recognizes individuals as an integral part of the process with which organizations absorb new knowledge, past research has paid limited attention to the antecedents of individual-level absorptive capacity. In this paper, we address this research gap. We build on the interactionist perspective and propose that individual-level absorptive capacity is shaped by the joint effects of individual employees’ dispositions (i.e., need for cognition and proactive personality) and their work context (i.e., time pressure and autonomy). Significantly, we also recognize the multidimensional nature of absorptive capacity, which suggests that individuals need different capabilities to learn and utilize new knowledge in their organizations. We test our predictions using a unique dataset from 646 employees working on knowledge-intensive tasks. Our results show that the joint effects of dispositional and contextual antecedents are not uniform across different dimensions of individual-level absorptive capacity.