The role of absorptive capacity on the dispositions and thriving

Employees play an essential role in absorbing knowledge from external sources and combining that with existing knowledge to contribute to organisational competitive advantage. This study seeks to identify critical antecedents of individual-level absorptive capacity and its mediating influence on personality traits and employee thriving relationships. Specifically, we draw on self-determination theory to investigate the impact of two personality traits (i.e., proactive personality and prosocial motivation) on employees thriving via the intervening mechanism of absorptive capacity. A time-lagged study design was used for collecting data from bank employees using the multistage sampling technique. Our results indicate that proactive and prosocially motivated employees experience thriving through the mediation mechanism of absorptive capacity. Our research offers theoretical and practical implications along with directions for future research.