Absorptive capacity, innovation and cultural barriers: A conditional mediation model

The construct of absorptive capacity has two dimensions: potential absorptive capacity (PACAP) and realized absorptive capacity (RACAP). This study addresses these two dimensions separately, and analyzes their influence on innovation outcomes (IO) in organizations. The study also examines the mediating role of RACAP in the relationship between PACAP and IO. Furthermore, the paper contains a discussion on the moderating role of cultural barriers (CB) in decreasing the PACAP–RACAP link. Consequently, this study builds and tests a conditional process model. Data comes from a sample of 110 firms from the Spanish automotive components manufacturing sector. Results from variance-based structural equation modeling and the PROCESS tool show that RACAP fully mediates the influence of PACAP on IO, and that CB negatively conditions this indirect effect. This study provides evidence that when CB attains medium-to-high values, this indirect influence is not different from zero.