Capacidades de absorción de las pequeñas empresas familiares desde la perspectiva de la innovación

Family businesses are the basis of the world economy. Their foundation, development and functioning are important not only for the domestic economy but also for the global one. Their characteristics can be demonstrated with the use of two subsystems. Oneis a family, the other is economic system. Between these two exist strong interconnections which determine the objectives and aims and the way the family and the business function. As a result they are becoming the stimuli of the their development. Family businesses are the oldest form of such activities, they exist in the cultures all over the world. Similarly, current family businesses are dominant form of doing business. Family businesses account fora half of SME in Poland. The aim of this article is to identify the altruistic behaviour of family businesses and the characteristics of altruistic dilemmas in the family.Lane and Lubatkin [1998] show that relative absorption capacities are the ability of a company to value, assimilate and apply the knowledge it acquired fromanother company. In addition, absorption capacities are flexible enough to be applied from the perspectives of business management, innovation or industrial clusters [Camisón Forés 2014]. In the present investigation, Pearson’s correlation analysis of the absorption capacities of small family firms and innovation was made, with a sample of73 family firms. A Likert-scale measurement instrument was used to measure the participants’perception of the variables under study. The results obtained show, in general,that there is a moderate strong positive relation (,690) between the variables, that is tosay that the higher the absorption capacity, the greater the innovation, with a level of significance(Sig< 0,01). It is concluded that the companies under study perceive that their levels to acquire, assimilate and apply the knowledge of other organizations, has animpact on the levels of innovation they have achieved in their product, in the process,in the organizational structure or in the commercialization of their goods and services.