Absorptive capacity, network embeddedness and local firm's knowledge acquisition in the Global Manufacturing Network

Global Manufacturing Network (GMN) is an innovative manufacturing system that provides great opportunities for local firms in developing countries to acquire knowledge and upgrade through collaborations in GMN. Using data of manufacturing firms, we confirm the conceptual model that local firm's absorptive capacity can contribute to its knowledge acquisition and performance in the context of GMN. Furthermore, our finding also suggests that firm's abilities to understand external knowledge will be more positively associated with its knowledge acquisition when the information embeddedness is high, and firm's abilities to apply external knowledge and knowledge acquisition will be more positively associated with the firm performance when the work embeddedness is high. Copyright © 2009 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.