Gratitude, nostalgia and what now? Knowledge acquisition and learning a decade later

We look at the development of absorptive capacity, organizational learning and IJV research literatures since 1996, using our 1996 JIBS paper as our ‘centering point’. Taking stock of the timing and patterns of citations to this paper opened up a unique window across time, venues and topics. This permitted us to more clearly position the paper vis-à-vis the contemporary corpus of the different literatures that provided the original context and impetus for us in the early 1990s. The paper has been embraced and carried forward by the burgeoning community of international business (IB) scholars on transitional economies and on IJVs. Although the Hungarian setting circa 1989–early 1990s was one we tended to view as a context to address and test theory-based issues and assumptions from a broader management literature, most indications of ‘outward’ diffusion of our ideas beyond the IB community have been recent. Indeed, over half the citations have occurred after 2003. We project our take on the current landscape toward the future, providing suggestions about research opportunities.