COLLABORATION OR CLASH? MAPPING THE EFFECTS OF TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM CONFLICT ON FIRM ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY MICHELE N. MEDINA Mississippi State University, College of Business Department of Management & Information Systems 302 McCool Hall, P.O. Box 9581 Mississippi State, Mississippi, 39762, USA michele.medina@msstate.edu INDU RAMACHANDRAN Texas State University, McCoy College of Business Department of Management, McCoy Hall 524 601 University Dr., San Marcos, Texas 78666, USA i_r38@txstate.edu JOSHUA J. DASPIT Texas State University, McCoy College of Business Department of Management, McCoy Hall 524 601 University Dr., San Marcos, Texas 78666, USA josh.daspit@txstate.edu Published 12 July 2018 Top management teams (TMTs) that work (not so) well together enhance (restrict) the ability of the firm to leverage capabilities, which affects outcomes such as innovation. Although internal team dynamics at this level have notable effects on the firm, much remains to be understood about how these effects occur. Therefore, we investigate TMT conflict (cognitive and affective) to understand how the firm-level knowledge capability of absorptive capacity (ACAP) is altered as a result of such types of conflict. Further, given that strategic orientations offer guiding principles for organisational behaviours, we sug- gest that the main effects of conflict are augmented by strategic orientations. Specifically, both entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation are posited to affect the relationship between conflict and ACAP, which expands understanding of the conditions in which TMT conflict affects ACAP. In all, a conceptual framework is developed to offer insight into how TMT conflict affects firm-level ACAP, highlighting differences that are International Journal of Innovation Management Vol. 23, No. 3 (April 2019) 1950023 (29 pages) © World Scientific Publishing Europe Ltd. DOI: 10.1142/S1363919619500233 1950023-1