PTTeams learn with the head, the heart and the hands
To take in a new idea, understanding it is not enough: you also have to care about it and get your hands on it. With 257 professionals who make decisions in teams, the research shows how thinking, feeling and acting support collective intelligence. Explained in 10 screens.
The classic concept looked only at the head
Absorptive capacity is the capacity to recognize the value of new knowledge coming from outside and to take it in. When the concept was born (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990), it was described as a matter of cognition: understanding.
The thesis turns to education and psychology, for which learning also involves feeling and acting. Switch each part on and off and see what happens to a team that gets a new tool.
Illustrative scenario, created for this page. The thesis also takes "applying" out of the definition: using knowledge is what comes after absorbing it. Source: Chapter 2, propositions P2.1 and P2.2.
Each domain has its own steps
To describe each part, the author used classic classifications from education: Bloom's taxonomy for thinking and feeling, and Harrow's for movement. They arrange learning in steps, from the simplest to the most complex.
The height shows the step's place on the staircase; the number on top is the mean answer to that step's question (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). The questionnaire has one question per step. Source: Figure 4.5, Table 5.2 and Appendix A.
From the person to the team
When several people absorb knowledge together, the three parts change shape. For the author, the result is collective intelligence: the team comes to know and decide more than each person alone.
Source: Chapter 3, propositions P3.1 to P3.3, based on 52 articles on collective intelligence.
A new yardstick, tested with 257 professionals
- 1,433articles collected
to rethink the concept; 44 remained in the analysis (Chapter 2).
- 255articles collected
on collective intelligence; 52 remained (Chapter 3).
- 26scales analyzed
None measured the capacity to absorb itself, with the three domains. So the author built an index with one question per step, refined with experts and a focus group (Chapter 4).
- 257responses
from professionals who thought about complex, non-routine decisions, such as launching a product or facing a crisis (Chapter 5).
To select the articles, the author created the MISELI method, published in the Revista de Administração Mackenzie (Appendix B). The questionnaire circulated through the researcher's network and LinkedIn for 30 days.
Percentages of the 257 respondents. Source: Table 5.1.
People rate themselves well; their teams, not so much
About themselves, the professionals gave high scores in all three domains, all above 4 on a 1 to 5 scale. About their team, none of the six behaviors reached 4. The weakest is team reflexivity: stopping to rethink how the team works.
Height proportional to the mean (1 to 5 scale). Hover over or tap a bar. Our reading: part of the gap may come from people tending to rate themselves more favorably than the group. Source: Tables 5.2 and 5.3.
A fifth of collective intelligence, and the heart pulls on its own
Together, the three domains form the absorptive capacity index, which explains 22.5% of the differences in collective intelligence between teams. In the index, head and heart weigh almost the same; the hands, less:
But when each domain enters separately, only one bridge holds all the way to collective intelligence. Try to cross.
Why does the head "fall"? Thinking and feeling went together closely in the answers (correlation of 0.807): people who gave themselves a high score on one tended to do the same on the other. With both in the same model, the affective domain took the shared effect. This does not mean thinking does not matter; the next screen shows that all three are necessary. Source: Figures 5.1 and 5.3, Tables 5.5 and 5.8.
Without a minimum of all three, the team does not get there
A second analysis (necessary condition analysis) asks a different question: is there a level below which a high result does not happen? Like having internet to attend an online class: necessary, but not sufficient.
Choose the collective intelligence target and see each domain's floor.
| Is it a floor? (a minimum is needed) | Is it a lever? (more of it, more result) | |
|---|---|---|
| Heart | yes | yes |
| Head | yes | no |
| Hands | yes | no |
Each small square is one of the 257 people; in color, those below that domain's floor for the chosen target. Floors rounded to two decimals. Source: Tables 5.6, 5.7 and 5.8 (necessary condition analysis coefficients: affective 0.501, cognitive 0.528, psychomotor 0.316, all significant).
What to do on Monday
For the author, anyone who wants smarter teams should start with each person's capacity to absorb knowledge, in all three domains. The results suggest an order: secure the floor in all three and, above it, look after the heart, the only one that kept pushing the result up.
Head
- Regular meetings where the team solves real problems together.
- An environment that rewards curiosity and experimentation.
- Hackathons and brainstorming sessions.
Heart
- Group feedback sessions, to listen to and value each contribution.
- Conversations about the company's values and the team's dynamics.
- Partnerships between teams and engagement programs.
Hands
- Workshops where people learn and apply a technique, software or tool together.
- Hands-on, collaborative training.
- Job rotation.
For HR
- The thesis's index can work as a diagnosis: it shows in which domain each person is weakest.
- With it, development investment goes where the need is greatest.
The order "floor first, heart next" is our reading of Tables 5.6 and 5.8, in line with the author's interpretation. The actions were not tested in the research.
What this research does not say
- Absorptive capacity explains a small part (22.5%). The author expected more and points to the scale chosen to measure collective intelligence as a possible cause. · according to the author
- Person and team at different levels. Capacity was measured in the person ("I can") and collective intelligence in the team ("our team"), though always with group decisions in mind. · according to the author
- Head and heart almost merge. The 0.807 correlation between them makes it hard to separate their effects; the author kept them apart to follow the theory. · according to the author
- Generic context. The research did not consider the type of organization, so the results do not automatically hold for all of them. · according to the author
- A snapshot, with self-assessment. People answered once, about themselves and their team; the sample came from the author's network and LinkedIn, with a senior profile. The results show associations and conditions, not cause and effect. · our observation
NARAZAKI, Rosana Yasue. Absorptive capacity configured from the learning domains and its effects on collective intelligence under the context of the decision-making process. Doctoral thesis (Doctorate in Business Administration) — Mackenzie Presbyterian University, São Paulo, 2025. Advisor: Prof. Silvio Popadiuk. Co-advisor: Prof. Ricardo Gouveia Rodrigues.
Thesis in a dual degree with the doctoral program in Management at the University of Beira Interior (Covilhã, Portugal), with support from CAPES (the Brazilian federal agency for graduate education), the Mackenzie Presbyterian Institute, NECE-UBI (FCT) and Erasmus+. The data were analyzed with structural equation modeling (PLS-PM, in SmartPLS 4, with 5,000 bootstrap resamples) and necessary condition analysis (NCA).
This interactive version simplifies the work for a general audience. The thesis is in English, with Chapters 2 and 3 in Portuguese; the phenomenology, the construction of the index and the full discussions are in the original text.