**4. Results**

Research in business-related sciences has gradually been enriched by the introduction of more sophisticated methodologies. This greater degree of development has enabled researchers to design and test increasingly complex models addressed to explaining the business reality.

Structural equations models have emerged from the evolution of multi-equation modelling developed chiefly in econometrics and combined with the principles of measurement from psychology and sociology, aimed at overcoming the limitation shared by other multivariate techniques such as multiple regression, factor analysis, multivariate analysis of variance or discriminant analysis, all of which can examine just one relation at a time [91]. Unlike the above-mentioned techniques, a structural equations model (SEM)-based analysis is able to explore a series of dependent relations simultaneously [91]. Therefore, this technique is particularly useful when a dependent variable becomes an independent variable in subsequent dependency relations.

For this reason, as with the scale validation, SEM was used to test the hypotheses, since they have proved to be highly useful in a non-experimental situation when the study aims to uncover the causal influence from one factor to another [88].

The hypotheses that constitute the model of effects were tested using EQS 6.1 software. **Table 5** shows that none of the proposed hypotheses were refuted. First, as expected, NMO presented a positive and significant effect on BGs' absorptive capability (H1: *λ* = 0.355; *t* = 4.931). Moreover, BGs' absorptive capability turned out to be a key variable in determining their achievement of competitive advantages, including differentiation-based competitive advantages (H2: *λ* = 0.222; *t* = 2.620) and cost-based competitive advantages (H3: *λ* = 0.330; *t* = 4.355). Finally each one of these variants of competitive advantage (differentiation-based and cost-based) showed a positive and significant influence on BGs' international results (H4: *λ* = 0.208; *t* = 3.050 and H5: *λ* = 0.128; *t* = 2.093, respectively).
