Absorptive capacity, organizational creativity, organizational agility, organizational resilience and competitive advantage in disruptive environments

Purpose This paper examines the relationships of absorptive capacity, organizational creativity and agility to organizational resilience and competitive advantage in disruptive environments and proposes modeling these relationships. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 216 respondents out of the 300 targeted respondents (a response rate of 72%) across different industries. The questionnaire data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings The paper provides empirical insights into how resilience is created through the interactions between absorptive capacity, organizational creativity and agility. It suggests that organizational creativity acts more as a “determinant force” in enhancing resilience in the disruptive environment, whereas organizational agility is more associated with competitive advantage. This study also shows the bi-directional relationships between organizational resilience and creativity. In a disruptive environment, an organization tends to seek new knowledge externally through its absorptive capacity to foster its creativity to build resiliency, whereas organizational resilience is also needed for the organization to promote its creativity. Research limitations/implications The research was conducted using cross-sectional data; thus, causality among the constructs could not be fully established. Practical implications The paper shows that an organization needs to build a culture of learning to enhance its absorptive capacity, creativity and resilience capabilities and sustain its competitive advantage. Originality/value This paper fulfills an identified need to study how absorptive capacity, organizational creativity, agility and resilience play strategic roles interactively and differently in developing a firm’s competitive advantage in a disruptive environment.