Organizational and technological antecedents for knowledge acquisition and learning

Abstract

This paper examines the factors affecting the decision to acquire external technology and the relative importance of different technology acquisition strategies pursued by British and Japanese firms. The paper draws on a study of 38 firms, consisting of 23 UK-based and 15 Japanese firms. This is not a comparative study of British and Japanese technology acquisition strategies. Rather, we aim to identify common factors affecting the decision to acquire external technology and the means by which firms attempt to do this. We identify two clusters of variable which appear to affect the decision to acquire technology. Firstly, an organization's inheritance, which includes corporate strategy, competencies, culture and what we refer to as management's 'comfort' with the technology. Secondly, the characteristics of the technology to be acquired, specifically, its competitive impact, complexity, codifiability and what we refer to as 'credibility' potential. Together, these factors will determine the degree and nature of technology acquisition strategy. We find that contrary to the present academic preoccupation with alliances and joint ventures, the firms examined ranked universities, research consortia and licensing as the most important sources of external technology. Rationale for technology acquisitionFirms choose to acquire technology from external sources rather than develop it in house for a number of reasons. Two theoretical models have dominated the issue of technology acquisition, namely transaction cost analysis and strategic behaviour (McGee and Dowling, 1994). Transaction cost analysis focuses on organizational efficiency, specifically where market transactions involve significant uncertainty. In such cases sellers of technology may engage in opportunistic behaviour (Eisenhardt, 1989). Generally, the fewer potential sources of technology, the lower the bargaining power of the purchaser, and the higher the transaction costs (Pisano, 1990). In addition, where the technology is complex it can be difficult to assess its performance. Therefore transaction costs are increased where a potential purchaser of technology has little knowledge of the technology (Teece, 1986(Teece, , 1988. In this respect the acquisition of technology differs from subcontracting more routine tasks such as production or maintenance work (Hauschildt, 1992). This suggests that acquisition of technology will require a closer relationship between buyers and sellers than traditional market transactions (Haour, 1992), resulting in a range of possible acquisition strategies and mechanisms (Granstrand et al., 1992). For example, Welch and Nayak (1992) argue that the optimal technology acquisition strategy will depend on the maturity of the technology, the firms technological position relative to competitors and the strategic significance of the technology.However, studies of technology licensing suggest that transaction cost considerations are not the most significant factors affecting

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Technology transfer model for Austrian higher education institutions

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