We study how firms can benefit from external knowledge resources contingent on absorptive capacity. We separate the three components of absorptive capacity – acquiring, assimilating, and exploiting external knowledge – and posit that the benefits of a firm's knowledge expansion through diversification into related and unrelated business domains differ by the firm's relative emphasis on the three components. We test our predictions on a panel of 153 large US-traded ICT firms. Our analysis broadly supports our hypotheses, highlighting the unique contribution of individual absorptive capacity components to organizational learning through diversification strategy.

中文翻译：

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吸收能力组成部分：相关和不相关多元化的绩效影响

我们研究企业如何根据吸收能力从外部知识资源中受益。我们将吸收能力的三个组成部分（获取、同化和利用外部知识）分开，并假设公司通过相关和不相关业务领域的多元化来扩展知识的好处因公司对这三个组成部分的相对重视程度而异。我们在由 153 家在美国上市的大型 ICT 公司组成的小组中测试了我们的预测。我们的分析广泛支持我们的假设，强调个人吸收能力成分通过多元化战略对组织学习的独特贡献。