Little research has addressed the effects of firms’ openness on Organizational Innovation (OI) This paper aims at bridging the institutional and the open innovation perspectives to analyse the external antecedents of OI. Using the French COI (Organizational Change and Computerization) survey for the period of 2003-2006, we find that OI is not only influenced by external pressures but also by an active external search strategy. Our results also show the existence of a substitution effect between external search activity and absorptive capacity when OI is concerned. Thus, while openness is beneficial for manufacturing firms seeking to adopt OI, internal obstacles still prevail in French manufacturing firms.
