Determinantes organizacionais e especificidades da capacidade de absorção de firmas no Brasil

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the organizational determinants and specificities of Absorptive Capacity (AC) of firms located in a developing country, like Brazil. Theoretically, these organizational determinants can be interpreted as routines or organizational innovations. In addition, it is shown that the seminal concept of AC is related to previous concepts – e.g. Organizational Capabilities and Penrose’s services – and it emerged to criticize the assumption of external knowledge available without costs for firms and the unidirectional relationship between industrial concentration and firms’ R&D activities. It is proposed a “bipartite elemental configuration” of AC as a synthesis for the discussion about the origin and evolution of AC. Empirically, two distinct analyses are done. The first uses the 2011 and 2014 Brazilian Innovation Survey (PINTEC) to discuss how Brazilian innovative firms, embedded in a context of a “vicious circle of limited AC”, build their capabilities to absorb knowledge from the market or academy (universities or research institutes). The main results are: (a) Academic AC is built by external relationships and firms’ researchers’ skills; (b) Market AC is affected by internal organizational innovations; (c) both AC is developed by training efforts or acquisition of external R&D, instead of expenditure on internal R&D. The second empirical analysis uses a survey specific to measure AC and its organizational determinants, complementing the previous results. It is found that managerial practices that promote the participation of workers in strategic innovative projects favor an AC focused on the use of new external knowledge to adapt existing technologies. It is also identified that different absorptive capacities, associated with diverse strategies, require different organizational configurations to be built. Therefore, this articulation between firms’ strategies, their organizational structures and absorptive capacities can be the object of further studies to understand the heterogeneity between firms in developing countries.