Absorptive capacity in technological learning in clean development mechanism projects

Abstract: Technology transfer in Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects of the Kyoto Protocol has become one of the important issues addressed both in policy agenda and by academic scholars. In many CDM project host countries, technology transfer is among the key provisions of sustainable development objectives of the CDM projects. This study is an effort to investigate CDM projects' related technology transfer process from the organizational learning perspective. The prerequisite for successful technology transfer and organizational technological learning is to foster technological capabilities (TC) of an organization. In this study we used data from our survey of the CDM project host organizations in four largest CDM host countries India, Brazil, Mexico and China. We assessed TC building progress and studied various characteristics of the organizations. The present paper focuses on absorptive capacity related determinants of technological capability building in the CDM projects. Absorptive capacity is a multidimensional concept thus we investigated the effect of the dimensions such as prior knowledge, personnel qualification, and training efforts. A strong positive association was established between prior knowledge and TC building; and less for qualification variable. Besides we proved a curvilinear relationship between prior knowledge and TC building outcomes.

JEL Classification: O13, O19, O57

Key words: Clean Development Mechanism, Technology transfer, technological capability building, technological learning, absorptive capacity