Relação da capacidade absortiva e orientação para o mercado no desempenho das microempresas do Corede Serra do Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

Microenterprises are regarded as an important part of an economic system. Their importance is centered on their action diversification, which is related to trade, services and industry, thus forming a buffering system for the economic variations of a nation. Their importance in terms of both number of operating companies and number of employees is fundamental to the economy. The absorptive capacity can be understood as a company’s ability to extract knowledge from the external environment, recognize the value of external information, assimilate it and apply it to commercial purposes in order to increase/develop innovation (COHEN; LEVINTHAL, 1990). Market orientation, in turn, was described by Narver and Slater (1990) as a construct comprising three behavioral components: customer orientation, competitor orientation and interfunctional coordination, with a focus on long-term and profitability, which have been denominated as decision criteria. This paper aimed at analyzing the relationship of these two constructs with the performance of microenterprises located in Corede Serra in Rio Grande do Sul. The sample consisted of 295 microenterprises. The results evidenced a significant correlation between absorptive capacity, market orientation and performance of the companies under study. The correlations presented were significant at the significance level (p<0.01). Despite being low to moderate, with values around 0.4, they evidenced a perceived relationship between absorptive capacity, market orientation and performance in micro-enterprises.