ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY AND INNOVATION: AN OVERVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTION OF LAST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

This work aims to achieve an overview of international scientific production on absorptive and innovation capacities in order to mapping the academic contributions already made between 1990 and 2015 (last 25 years). Bibliometric methods, and social network analysis were used to understand the behavior of 1,693 published articles and analysis of key works cited. Most notably, the growing publication with related topics, in approximate exponential growth, concentration of work into five groups and six co-citation periodic coupling groups, indicating possible fields for publication related to the themes absorptive capacity and innovation. The analysis of the key articles cited identifies the themes and methods used, as well as understand the context of the themes absorptive capacity and innovation.