The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between relative absorptive capacity and suppliers' operational performance.
The paper uses structural equation modelling of survey data from 218 Canadian manufacturers referring to a particular relationship with one of their customers.
Results suggest that only the first dimension of the relative absorptive capacity – knowledge sharing routines – influences the knowledge transferred from the customer to the supplier. Knowledge transfer acts as a mediator between knowledge sharing routines and the supplier's operational performance improvement.
The absence of a significant association between the second dimension of relative absorptive capacity – overlapped knowledge bases – and knowledge transfer is a surprising result that should be further investigated.
This appears to be the first study to operationalise and empirically test relative absorptive capacity and its consequences in the particular context of customer‐supplier relationships.
