From Principals' Inspirational Vision Content and Potential Absorptive Capacity to Realized Absorptive Capacity: Predicting Teacher Absenteeism

Abstract

This paper builds upon the theoretical framework developed by Zahra and George (2002) to empirically explore, first,
the moderator effect of principals' inspirational vision content as a social mechanism that reduces the gap between
potential absorptive capacity (PACAP; the ability to acquire and assimilate external knowledge) and realized
absorptive capacity (RACAP; the ability to transform and exploit this external knowledge to school processes); and
second, the relationship between RACAP and long-term school outcomes (teachers' absenteeism 1 year later). Based
on a sample of 600 teachers from 100 elementary schools in Israel, results showed that the relationship between
PACAP and RACAP is not conditioned by principals' inspirational vision content. The latter and PACAP predicted
RACAP separately. Further, RACAP was negatively correlated with teacher absenteeism. This study provides a
deeper understanding of the ACAP model in the school context and opens new avenues to exploring the social
integration mechanism between PACAP and RACAP. It also adds a new construct to predict teacher absenteeism
over the long term.