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While scholars widely acknowledge the impact of digitalization on contemporary business, existing research frequently treats digitalization as a unified concept, overlooking its complex, multidimensional nature. Our study addresses this gap by developing a psychometrically sound scale of digital technology adoption to understand the complex phenomenon of digitalization. To obtain a generalizable scale, our study develops and validates 19 items, classifying them into four dimensions defining a firm’s digital technology adoption. By delineating and operationalizing the key technologies that underpin digital technology adoption (i.e., digital communication technology, digital in situ technology, digital data analytics technology, and digital networking technology), we offer a finer-grained understanding of how firms leverage digital technologies. Ultimately, this study seeks to advance theoretical understanding and managerial practice by providing a valid and reliable measurement tool for digital technology adoption.

The microfoundations perspective offers promising avenues for advancing theoretical and empirical research in international business (IB). However, two key challenges have limited progress so far: first, uncovering micromacro relationships in complex, often nested, IB phenomena; second, applying the multiple theoretical lenses offered by IB to coherently explain relationships. This paper addresses these challenges of applying microfoundations in IB by proposing a modular approach to its foundational framework, Coleman's (1990) bathtub. By breaking down the bathtub into its component parts or modules, each module relates to a specific, independent relationship between two constructs, that can be theorized and tested. We provide clear definitions of how modular (mono, abridged, partial, or full) explanations can be used as a tool for conceptualization and research design. In addition to enhancing our theoretical precision, a modular microfoundations approach also provides the architecture for existing studies to be connectable to new work focusing on other modules. This holds the potential of creating a full microfoundations explanation and thereby a rigorous and cumulative means for theory building in IB. We call for scholars to adopt this modular microfoundations perspective to better tackle the important questions of our time for global business and society.

Despite its critical role in knowledge transfer and the development of multinational corporations (MNCs), disseminative capacity has received limited attention compared to the mirror concept of absorptive capacity. Drawing from the knowledge-based view and adopting the perspective of subsidiaries as knowledge senders, this paper proposes and conceptualizes four sequential dimensions of disseminative capacity - identification, articulation, association, and support - which constitute potential and realized disseminative capacities. Furthermore, we explore how structural integration mechanisms could influence the development of disseminative capacity in subsidiaries of MNCs. Our fine-grained approach recognizes the multidimensionality and the dynamic nature of disseminative capacity. We also provide theoretical and practical implications for enhancing the disseminative capacity of MNC subsidiaries, thereby facilitating knowledge transfer within MNCs.

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.

Absorptive capacity has received considerable scholarly attention due to its ability to explain heterogeneous degrees of learning from complex and dynamic knowledge environments. Extant absorptive capacity frameworks and models unmistakably take firms as the focal unit and level of analysis. Mounting empirical evidence, in contrast, shows the growing importance of teams in acquiring and utilizing external knowledge. Teams are not just scale models of firms; they have unique attributes and function as an active context of organizational learning. However, previous research does not consider such idiosyncrasies when conceptualizing absorptive capacity. We focus on absorptive capacity within the meso-level context of teams and problematize several entrenched assumptions behind existing models. We then propose a re-conceptualization of absorptive capacity with four new dimensions that collectively address these assumptions and pay systematic attention to the distinctive characteristics of teams as active learning contexts. 

Overview: To maximize the rent-yield of the innovation and product development process, firms attempt to commercialize knowledge through activities that require effective knowledge transfer. Knowledge transfer remains a challenge for most firms, however, due to the recipient organization’s lack of ability to absorb and apply new knowledge. We examined four knowledge-transfer projects within a large multinational corporation. We identified important actions, lessons learned, and recommendations that practitioners can use to enhance their own knowledge-transfer processes. 

International diversification is a fundamental pillar of multinational corporations' (MNCs) growth strategies. Consequently, there is a considerable body of research on the performance implications of MNCs' international diversification strategies. We extend this literature by adopting a relational view where we compare the diversification profiles of firms in an inter-organizational context. We argue that the relative characteristics of firms' and their partners' diversification profiles is an indicator of parties' resource bases and thereby can explain if and when inter-organizational ties yield optimum performance outcomes. We examine these relative characteristics and propose a conceptual refinement by differentiating between the degree and content dimensions of international diversification. Analyzing data from 202 manufacturing firms from the S&P 500 list, we find that firms achieve optimum performance when their partners have moderately higher degrees of international diversification and a moderate overlap of presence in foreign markets.