ظرفیت جذب: افزایش جذب شیوه های تولید مبتنی بر زمان

Increasingly, manufacturers are making radical changes in management practices and investing heavily in advanced technologies as they attempt to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Organizations seeking to implement these changes should have an internal environment that emphasizes knowledge assimilation and sharing and creates continuous learning capability, i.e., absorptive capacity. This study reviews the construct of absorptive capacity, develops a valid and reliable instrument to measure it, and examines its impact on the organization's ability to assimilate innovative manufacturing technology and management practice. To illustrate the links, this study tests the relationships among absorptive capacity, time-based manufacturing practices, and value to customer. Structural equation modeling, applied to a relatively large sample (n = 303), indicates strong, positive, and direct relationships between absorptive capacity and time-based manufacturing practices, and between time-based manufacturing practices and value to customer. The managerial implications of these empirical findings are also discussed.

The business environment has three revolutionary change forces: intense global competition, rapid technological advancements, and innovative managerial practices (Champlin and Olson, 1994). The Global Manufacturing Futures Survey indicates that U.S. manufacturers face unprecedented competition in world markets, which requires them to move beyond cost containment and quality assurance to address global opportunities for innovative new products and rapid response (Miller et al., 1992 and Harrison, 2002). The increasing speed and power of computers and information systems coupled with developments in advanced manufacturing technology are changing the ways productivity is increased and customers are satisfied (Shaw et al., 1997 and Oliner and Sichel, 2000). New managerial approaches, such as time-based manufacturing and new product development practices, enable firms to anticipate and respond effectively to rapid environmental change (Koufteros et al., 1998, Cooper and Kleinschmidt, 1994 and Golhar and Stamm, 1991). In this context, managers are being challenged to emphasize organizational learning capability, i.e. absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990), which helps firms assimilate new technologies and practices.

This study is possibly the first large-scale empirical effort to investigate and measure AC and to examine its impact on the firm's ability to implement innovative management practices. Measures for AC were developed through a carefully designed large-scale data collection process and rigorous instrument validation methods. The final instruments, listed in Table 3, are short and easy to use. The content domain of the constructs has been covered adequately because care was taken during item generation. The factor structure is simple and has good loadings. The instruments exceed generally accepted validity and reliability standards for basic research. The resulting instrument can be widely used in future research, and they should facilitate interdisciplinary studies in manufacturing management and information technology management. The instrument can also be used as a valuable tool for practitioners to evaluate their firm's level of AC.