| This thesis reviews the theoretical and empirical studies in the literature that cover various disciplines including innovation and technology management, strategic management, R&D management, and marketing management. The thesis develops a comprehensive framework that outlines the relationships among absorptive capacity, innovation performance, functional integration, and commercialization strategy that a pharmaceutical firm formulates to achieve the maximum benefits from its innovation. It also examines the importance of building higher levels of absorptive capacity to improve the innovation performance of the pharmaceutical firms.;The linear and Poisson regression techniques were applied to analyze and investigate the association among variables in this thesis. In addition, this thesis tests the ways functional integration and commercialization strategy moderate the relationship between absorptive capacity and firm performance. The results show that both R&D and SGA investments have a positive and significant impact on the innovation performance of pharmaceutical firms. Moreover, the findings of this research show that functional integration and commercialization strategy moderate the relationships among investments in R&D and SGA (i.e., absorptive capacity) and some of the dimensions of innovation performance.;This thesis significantly contributes to the theory and body of knowledge in the innovation and technology management discipline by synthesizing and extending the previous disparate studies and by developing and empirically testing a model for the relationship between absorptive capacity and firm performance.;Following a comprehensive literature review, the model in this study outlines the relationship between absorptive capacity as measured by investments in both R&D and SGA and firm's innovation performance. It also examines the moderating effects of functional integration and commercialization strategy on the relationship between absorptive capacity and four dimensions of firm performance. This thesis also contributes to the body of knowledge by identifying four types of commercialization strategy (i.e., in-house drug development strategy, developing complementary asset strategy, integration strategy and licensing strategy) that pharmaceutical companies can formulate to commercialize their innovative drugs.;Innovation performance is considered a multi-dimensional construct that consists of financial and non-financial criteria including sales revenue, customer criteria, opportunities criteria, and the number of new drugs that a pharmaceutical company introduces to market. This thesis measures absorptive capacity by the amount of R&D and sales, general, and administration (SGA) investments made by a company. The conceptual framework was tested on a dataset of 65 responses received from senior executives (CEOs, presidents, and vice-presidents of R&D, marketing, business development, and commercialization) of Canadian and U.S. pharmaceutical firms. |
