Learning Orientation and Market Orientation: The Mediating Role of Employees’ Absorptive Capabilities: An Abstract

Abstract

This paper aims to theoretically explore the mediating role of employees’ absorptive capabilities between learning orientation and market orientation. Past research asserts the interaction of learning orientation with the market orientation to gain competitive advantage but do not pay attention to the mediating role of learning capabilities. To fill the gap, this study theorizes the employees’ absorptive capabilities as a learning capability and theoretically explores the role of components of employees’ absorptive capabilities in determining market orientation activities. This paper studies the micro-level dynamic capability theory under the organizational learning theory to present a simple yet complete organizational learning framework, consisting of learning orientation, employees’ absorptive capability, and market orientation to provide a deeper understanding of phenomenon for future research. This paper made several contributions to existing literature. Firstly, this paper studies employees’ absorptive capabilities with market orientation in the marketing domain. Secondly, this study uses disaggregated concepts to theoretically explore the role of operational-level employees’ absorptive capabilities in determining market orientation activities. Thirdly, theoretically explores the resource development role of dynamic capabilities in market orientation activities. Lastly, by theorizing the mediating role of employees’ absorptive capabilities between learning orientation and market orientation, this paper provides coherence in this relation. Considering the limitations, several highly cited studies on learning orientation and market orientation are reviewed to build theoretical arguments but a comprehensive bibliometric analysis is not done. Secondly, combinations of aggregated and disaggregated variables are theorized for developing propositions.