Organizational unit ACAP: Social context and performance outcomes

This paper conceptualizes on an organizational unit's ACAP, and examines its relationships with several interpersonal conditions, knowledge-oriented outcomes, and performance consequences. In a sample of 93 marketing divisions from the Greek ICT, pharmaceutical and food industry, we develop a measure of unit's ACAP -defined as the ability to acquire, assimilate, and integrate new knowledge-, examine the determining role of several interpersonal unit characteristics (i.e., social interaction, trust, and shared vision), and test both the knowledge and performance effects of the absorptive capacity construct. The results of a structural model, through path analysis, provided support for all the hypothesized relationships, thus broadening our understanding of the conditions under which absorptive capacity may lead to knowledge and performance outcomes.