The Impact of Absorptive Capacity on Construction Innovation Performance: Network Perspective

Absorptive capacity is an ability to acquire, assimilate, transform and exploit fresh external knowledge, and finally apply it to commercial ends. However, the study on how related factors affect the absorptive capacity in innovation network is still not much. This paper develops a hypothesis testing model of construction network to explore the absorptive capacity of construction networks where external innovations exist, and seeks the ways of developing and promoting social networks consisting of stakeholder organizations. This model is based on the hypothesis that absorptive capacity could influence network position and tie strength among the stakeholders to untangle the effects of absorptive capacity in promoting knowledge transferring and sharing among network nodes. The result indicates that network structure and knowledge stock can influence innovation performance through absorptive capacity; absorptive capacity plays a certain role of intermediary. This study is useful as an aid for assessing and developing strategies to improve construction network's capacity, thus to enhance working ability and innovation performances.