The Absorptive Capacity-Based View of Training: Enhancing Organizational Performance: An Exploratory Study in Spanish Family Businesses

In recent years academic interest has grown considerably regarding the absorptive dynamic capability, and as such, studying the effect it has on organizational learning, knowledge sharing, innovation, capacity building and performance of the company has greatly increased. Moreover, numerous research papers have studied the effect that training has on organizational performance. However, there are very few studies which link together training, absorptive capacity / learning capability and organizational performance. Investigations of this manner can make interesting contributions to the field of absorptive capacity, learning and the development of a new approach to more effective human resources training based on absorptive capacity as strategy. Indeed, the aim of this work is to create an approach whereby one can determine whether the connection between training and performance in Spanish family businesses is mediated by absorptive capacity. To this end, we propose the case study method in six Spanish family businesses.