Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

EXPLORING THE STRATEGY‐TECHNOLOGY CONNECTION IN SMALL MANUFACTURING FIRMS

EXPLORING THE STRATEGY‐TECHNOLOGY CONNECTION IN SMALL MANUFACTURING FIRMS Small manufacturing firms make a significant contribution to the economy. Yet, partly because of the greater availability of data on larger firms, strategic management and manufacturing strategy research have tended to neglect small business. Using a survey of small manufacturers, we examine the applicability of Porter's typology of generic strategies to this context and investigate the links between generic strategies and one important dimension of manufacturing strategy‐technology management. The analysis of generic strategies shows consistency with previous work on larger firms and tends to support the use of the typology in this setting. Moreover, the internal and external influences on the technology adoption decision process vary significantly with generic strategies, implying that the role played by individuals and networks constitutes a dominant factor. Surprisingly, no distinction was found between firm groupings with respect to decision criteria, which suggests that the decision process of small firms remains rather inexplicit, informal, and, to a large extent, intuitive. We also found that technologically more sophisticated firms tend to hold stronger competitive positions and that technological strength appears to be related to both cost advantage and differentiation. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Production and Operations Management Wiley

EXPLORING THE STRATEGY‐TECHNOLOGY CONNECTION IN SMALL MANUFACTURING FIRMS

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/exploring-the-strategy-technology-connection-in-small-manufacturing-n8HzknEHhJ

References (60)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 Production and Operations Management Society
ISSN
1059-1478
eISSN
1937-5956
DOI
10.1111/j.1937-5956.1992.tb00359.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Small manufacturing firms make a significant contribution to the economy. Yet, partly because of the greater availability of data on larger firms, strategic management and manufacturing strategy research have tended to neglect small business. Using a survey of small manufacturers, we examine the applicability of Porter's typology of generic strategies to this context and investigate the links between generic strategies and one important dimension of manufacturing strategy‐technology management. The analysis of generic strategies shows consistency with previous work on larger firms and tends to support the use of the typology in this setting. Moreover, the internal and external influences on the technology adoption decision process vary significantly with generic strategies, implying that the role played by individuals and networks constitutes a dominant factor. Surprisingly, no distinction was found between firm groupings with respect to decision criteria, which suggests that the decision process of small firms remains rather inexplicit, informal, and, to a large extent, intuitive. We also found that technologically more sophisticated firms tend to hold stronger competitive positions and that technological strength appears to be related to both cost advantage and differentiation.

Journal

Production and Operations ManagementWiley

Published: Sep 1, 1992

There are no references for this article.