The roles of relational diversity and embeddedness in absorptive capacity enhancement

In business-to-business marketing research, the nature of interfirm relationships is considered critical determinants of firm performance. In the face of recent digitalization, this study reexamines what roles "relationships" play in interfirm learning. To capture an interfirm learning process, our study focuses on the concept of absorptive capacity, which comprises acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation. To demonstrate the importance of relationships in interfirm learning, we examine the roles of two different relationship characteristics, relational diversity and embeddedness, in interfirm learning and their impacts on the acquisition and assimilation of external knowledge. Using survey data obtained from industrial manufacturers, we found that relational diversity and embeddedness play irreplaceable roles in interorganizational learning. Relational diversity, which refers to the extent to which firms maintain relationships with a variety of organizations, is positively related to the firm's acquisition capacity. Meanwhile, embeddedness (the quality of relationships) facilitates the assimilation of acquired knowledge. The findings also indicate that high levels of acquisition and assimilation enhance firms' capacity to transform and exploit obtained knowledge to realize business outcomes. By highlighting the roles of interpersonal relationships in interfirm learning, this study has implications for the concept of human centricity in digitalized and automated industrial processes.