Temporal Tensions of Dynamic Capabilities: The Integration of External Resources and the Implications of Assetization for Non-profit Hybrid Organizations

The literature on dynamic capabilities has taken assets as givens and left the processes of integrating external resources as organizational assets under-explored. In this paper, we explore organizations’ dynamic integration of resources as assets. Our paper is based on an extensive, qualitative study of large grants awarded to researchers in universities in a northern European context. We show that researchers (nonmanagerial individuals) transform their grants into organizational assets through a process of organizational embeddedness which involves turning monetary resources into human and material resources of future benefit to the organization. We also show that this process of integration is not smooth but associated with temporal tensions that are related to temporariness (of the resources), rhythms (of the external versus internal environment), and time horizons (of individual versus organizational logics of return). These findings advance our theoretical understanding of dynamic capabilities by clarifying the pre-existing resource/asset ambiguity, showing the process of transformation, and unveiling the tensions involved in transformation.