The Industry-Level Impact of Information Technology: An Empirical Analysis of Three Industries*

As noted by several observers, information technology (IT) has rapidly evolved from “part of the organizational overhead” into a strategic resource capable of changing patterns of competition within industries [8, p. 275]. However, while this evolution has become part of the fabric for literature exploring the strategic impact of IT, very few studies have been undertaken to determine the specific influence(s) of technology-based competition on industry structure. The development of analytical frames for capturing aspects of industry behavior provides a potentially powerful tool for evaluating the influence strategic IT initiatives may have on current bases of competition. Drawing from the theoretical disciplines of industrial economics and strategic management, this study develops a framework for analyzing longitudinal changes in industry structure. Working within this frame, the study then analyzes the nature and change of structure in three industries during and after the introduction of strategic information technology. The findings suggest that in each of these industries structural characteristics were dramatically altered subsequent to the introduction of competitive-based IT. In two of the industries (airlines and industrial chemicals), early adopters broke away from other industry participants, in effect, forming unique bases of competition. In the remaining industry (drug wholesalers), previously distinct bases of competition consolidated, resulting in a more competitive industry structure than that which existed prior to the technological innovation.     

Managing Technology Selection and Development Risk in Competitive Environments

Managing development decisions for new products based on dynamically evolving technologies is a complex task, especially in highly competitive industries. Product managers often have to choose between introducing an incrementally better, safe new product early and a superior, yet highly risky, product later. Recommendations for managing such performance vs. time‐to‐market trade‐offs often ignore competitive reactions to development decisions. In this paper, we study how a firm could incorporate the presence of a strategic competitor in making technology selection and investment decisions regarding new products. We consider a model in which an innovating firm and its rival can introduce a new product immediately or pursue a more advanced product for later launch. Further, the firm can reduce the uncertainty surrounding product development by dedicating more resources; the effectiveness of this investment depends on the firm's innovative capacity. Our model generates two sets of insights. First, in highly competitive industries, firms can adopt different technologies and effectively use introduction timing to mitigate the effects of price competition. More importantly, the firm could strategically invest in the advanced product to influence its rival's technology choice. We characterize equilibrium development and investment decisions of the firms, and derive innovative capacity hurdles that govern a firm's choice between the risky and safe alternatives. The effects of development flexibility—where firms might have the option to revert to the safe product if the advanced product fails—are also considered.     

Evolution of strategic management: The need for new dominant designs

The development of strategic management is explained from an evolutionary perspective on the basis of cycles of variation, selection and retention. In industry, breakthrough innovations, or technological discontinuities, initiate eras of ferment that end when a generally accepted standard, or dominant design, starts an era of incremental change. In strategic management, the original definition of strategy initiated an era of ferment characterized by a focus on the environment. The attention to the environment of firms and the integration with other areas of inquiry reached a point of maturity with development of a widely accepted model for analyzing industry and with the definition of generic strategies. The resource-based view of the firm created a new era of ferment by affirming that the main sources of sustainable competitive advantages reside in the development and use of valuable resources. A new period, marked by swift advances in technology and increasingly blurred boundaries among industries, markets and competitors as well as diverse and more complex sources of competitive advantages, imposes on scholars and practitioners an imperative need to conceive new dominant designs. This paper illustrates the evolution toward new directions and challenges of creating new dominant paradigms in strategic management that revolve around the concepts of knowledge, learning, and innovation.     

A framework for the strategic management of future tyre technology

Strategically managing technology faces one major problem: technology planners and managers who mistake ‘R & D management’ for ‘strategic technology management’. In globally competitive markets, survival and growth of tyre companies will increasingly depend upon the ability to manage technological resources strategically. This article proposes a process model which views the strategic management of technology as ‘techno-business management’, where technology and business strategy, planning and implementation can be facilitated by the use of portfolio frameworks and technology forecasting techniques in analysing and addressing the key strategic management areas of techno-business strategy development and strategy implementation.     

浅谈可追溯性管理实现方案的选择

可追溯性对于当今日趋复杂的行业供应链管理，企业的资产及质量管理的贡献正不断的提升。并且随着技术的革新，可追溯性在不同行业中的实践和应用也有所不同。本文以高端半导体产品封装测试为安全的对如何进行可追溯性管理实现方案的选择进行了简要的分析。     

Ecological stewardship in Japanese firms

As pressure develops for foreign multinationals to follow the lead of U.S. companies by providing greater accountability on environmental performance and the development of environmental management systems; author Jacob Park brings CES readers a rare insight into the nature of Japanese environmental strategy. With examples from NEC's “green innovation” plan, Mr. Park reveals the strategic initiatives Japanese companies institute to address their own unique set of internal and external pressures.     

Japan's new industrial era—II. The new information and service industries

This is a second of a series of three articles on the Japanese economy and its future development. The mainstream of the new development will be the microelectronics technology and the progress of information and service-oriented industries. Although this new trend is unlikely to set up a momentum as powerful as that which led to the rapid growth in the two decades prior to 1973, it is a revolutionary force at all levels of economic and social activity.     

The Japanese management theory jungle

Many competing hypotheses have been advanced to account for the apparent effectiveness of Japanese management practices. The present review of some of the leading theories attempts to classify and clarify the state of knowledge of Japanese management. Although each theory may be correct as a partial explanation of Japan's success, no single conceptualization has captured the complexity of Japan's managerial achievement. Further development of integrated, internally consistent models is needed.     

Rationalizing branch banking

Large organizations and particularly organizations with the complex structure of branch banking, require time to change. The author does not suggest that there are any clear answers to the strategic planning problems facing branch banking. Today's advanced technology provides new tools to respond to change and progress. To do this accurate assessment of market segments, an effective internal management structure, efficient management and a level and quality of staff to use the new technology are required. This, in turn, will demand new recruitment and training methods.     

Strategic planning in an age of uncertainty

Strategic planning and decision making in the face of uncertainty have always presented a serious challenge to top management, but the present scale of uncertainty is unprecedented. Decision makers used to be able to rely on the past to predict the trends of the future. Now they are increasingly being forced to make important decisions that depend upon highly uncertain external factors for which the past offers little guidance. In all areas of business and government, there is a vital need to understand and implement procedures that enable decision makers to deal more effectively with uncertainty for planning and allocating their organizations' resources.Because of differences in their social, political and economic environments, European and Japanese managers are today affected by many acute areas of uncertainty— such as industrial democracy, floating exchange rates, changing social and political values, growing environmental awareness, government regulation, technological change, pollution control regulation, energy cost, and raw material availability—earlier than their counterparts in the U.S.A. These uncertainties affect not only private sector manufacturing industries, but also financial and service industries as well as nationalized industries and government organizations.This article shows how ineffective methods of dealing with uncertainty can lead to serious mistakes with costly consequences. The cost of overconfidence and people's natural but futile tendency to ignore or to try to eliminate uncertainty is illustrated by the crises seen recently in the world steel and shipbuilding industries. The article then demonstrates how decision analysis procedures that focus directly on the major decision points in the strategic plan enable executives not only to include uncertainty directly in their strategic planning, but also to increase their understanding of the decision process and their ability to communicate the results to others.     

Strategic adoption of a flexible manufacturing system: Case study of an Indian electronics enterprise

In recent years, strategic considerations relating to manufacturing management in the electronics industry have undergone transformation at a very rapid rate. They are being driven by pluralistic customer demands and influenced by technological innovations and competitive interventions. This paper reports on the strategic adoption and implementation of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) in an Indian electronics enterprise which has collaborative alliance with a multinational corporation (MNC) in the USA. A hybrid model has been formulated using the nominal group technique (NGT) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to evaluate various alternative AMTs.     

Bob Hayes: Forty Years of Leading Operations Management Into Uncharted Waters

The enormous contributions of Bob Hayes to Operations Management (OM) are reviewed. His early work made innovative contributions to probability theory and utility estimation that enabled existing Operations Research theory to be applicable to real problems. Later, inspired by field trips to Japanese and German manufacturers, he joined Kim Clark to conduct an ambitious study of 12 plants in three companies, establishing the impact on productivity of factors such as reject rate, work‐in‐process, and production rate variation. In the 1980s, when adoption of advanced manufacturing automation was in vogue, Bob joined Jai Jaikumar to offer a caution, that new manufacturing technologies required new ways of managing and that advanced technology coupled with obsolete management would produce poorer, not better, results. Perhaps Bob's greatest contribution was to raise OM to a more strategic level. With numerous coauthors, notably Steve Wheelwright, he provided a framework for corporate and manufacturing strategy and showed how to achieve alignment between the two, particularly in the choice of production processes. Recent papers articulated a vision for OM in which a focus on the issues of operating managers provides a consistent framework, but enables our research agenda to evolve as the world's economy changes.     

Japanese technological advance: Problems of evaluation

Japan no longer rests its manufacturing excellence on borrowed technology. There is clear evidence of creativity and pioneering advance in indigenous Japanese science and technology; the defence-related areas are a major example. It is flourishing under determined government support, as seen in the technopolis concept and the State's attitude to small and medium-sized industries.Ian Gow raises the warning cone of Japanese threat to European technological competitiveness. It will be increased if bilateral transfer of technology increases between the USA and Japan. The remedies are to monitor the Japanese more closely and collaborate. The latter will bring net benefit to Europe.     

Strategic opportunity and economic performance in multinational enterprises: The role and effects of information and communication technology

Recent work on multinational enterprises (MNEs) argues that diversity in terms of the markets they serve and the environments they acquire inputs from provides strategic opportunity unavailable to purely domestic firms. However, MNEs are also exposed to higher levels of complexity and uncertainty due to the presence in different locations and confront associated needs to integrate and coordinate activities. This paper suggests that the attendant cost–benefit tradeoff can be influenced by computer-mediated communication. Based on a sample of 88 organizations in the computer products industries, we find that multinationality in itself does not guarantee a higher level of strategic opportunity. Instead, use of information technology to facilitate communication among managers across functional and geographical boundaries enhances coordination of multinational activities in the development of strategic opportunity, which in turn is associated with superior performance.     

Strategic technology alliance termination: An empirical investigation

There is growing consensus that overall alliance termination rates are high. However, despite this track record of termination and despite unsurpassed growth rates of strategic technology alliances, little is known about the reasons for their termination. Typically strategic alliances have been characterized as inherently instable, i.e. often involving unplanned and premature termination of the alliance by partnering firms indicating alliance failure. The literature on strategic technology alliances, however, proposes that alliance termination does not always indicate failure, but can be intended and can be a sign of strength. We examine these different perceptions by using a sample of 48 strategic technology alliances in different high-technology industries. The findings in the paper confirm that the rates of termination are rather high for strategic technology alliances. Overall, we found that in particular negative prospects about future cooperation, negative perceptions about joint benefits and the lack of a win-win situation had an impact on the decision to terminate a strategic technology alliance. Also, the fact that some companies opt only for short-term (not for long-term and renewed) cooperation seems to introduce a negative factor into the longevity of strategic technology alliances.     

Analysis of justification problems in CIMS review and projection

Attempts to study justification problems related to advanced manufacturing systems such as CIMS are made. Such systems conceptually promise industries many significant advantages, but many justification procedures that are used in appraising such system proposals remain ill-suited because of their failure to incorporate multifaceted strategic and tactical issues. The aim in this paper is to review some of these procedures and finally propose a total systems approach. The objective is to make a prognosis of the issues to prepare a projective base for organizational decision support. Two case studies from Indian industries where CIMS have been tried out are also described.     

Contextual influences on international subsidiaries' product technology strategy

We seek to test a broad range of factors that influence the technology sourcing decision of international subsidiaries in acquiring product technology from outside the firm (i.e., outsourcing) versus internal development. A regression model, used to analyze data from 187 international subsidiaries in six industries and with parents based in 14 countries, identifies the environmental, strategic, configurational, and resource endowment factors that influence the technology sourcing decision. Specifically, the level of product dynamism in the subsidiary's industry and the distance between the subsidiary's primary marketing and R&D operations are associated with a greater reliance on outsourcing. A differentiation goal, a low-cost goal, along with the level of the subsidiary's human and financial resources are associated with a greater reliance on internal development.     

区域性企业战略集团的划分与效率分析

战略集团理论是近年来在国际管理科学界兴起的一个研究热点。在理论和实践上,它对产业战略重组、企业竞争战略的选取等方面都具有较好的指导作用。通常意义下,人们都是从产业的整体角度去讨论战略集团的存在与划分问题。本文缩小了产业范围,对产业内的局部企业进行了分析,通过一个煤炭企业战略集团划分的实例,证明了现实的战略集团在区域性产业内的存在性。同时,本文还运用数据包络分析(DEA)技术进一步证明了在战略集团之间存在着明显的差异性。最后指出,战略集团的划分并结合企业效率的评价对整个产业或局部性产业内的企业重组具有较高的参考价值。