EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES IN IT INDUSTRY

Emerging Technologies in IT Industry

Emerging Technologies in IT Industry

Introduction

Whilst recognizing the importance of technical change, mainstream economic theories in the 20th century have assumed that its generation is exogenous. One reason is the theoretical convenience of assuming that firms have perfect knowledge of production possibilities, since this makes the origin of technological knowledge irrelevant to the analysis of the dynamics of competition between firms, and of management behaviour and choice. In addition, there are profound difficulties in assessing the value of technical activities and inventions before they are commoditized and exchanged in markets, typically by embodying them in products. From a management perspective, this is a totally unsatisfactory state of affairs, since economic theory is unable to distinguish effectively between firms, except through glib generalities about comparative efficiency of the firm's production function (Bennett 2005).

However, it has also given free rein to scholars of management to explain issues that 'really matter', including the processes of leadership, control and organization. Viewing technology as exogenous has allowed both scholars of business management and microeconomics to avoid the gritty particularities of technology.

Discussion

Scholars of management can also provide a re-examination of the mainstream tradition in ways that illuminate the role of technology. This has led to improved understanding of the role of technological change in corporate marketing positioning, and to a useful taxonomy of different forms of technology strategy that underpin corporate strategy (Clerkin & Gronjberg 2007). The weakness of the approach is one to be expected, given its idealization of the management process, namely, the neglect of factors internal to the firm that constrain corporate choice and behaviour - in particular, competencies, power struggles, and the misalignments between technological and other organizational practices.

There have, of course, been other exceptions to the prevailing mainstream trend. Schumpeter and many other economists believed that the historical development of the means of production is central to an understanding of issues such as business cycles, the aggregate rate of growth and sectoral composition of individual economies, and the interactions between strategy and structure in specific industries.

In particular, they identify three dimensions of such competencies - market positioning, technological paths, and organizational processes. Whilst useful as a tool for describing and analysing the past, this approach has limited ability to prescribe the future. This is because successful positioning, paths and processes are not preordained (Cortez & Rafter 2007). They become clear after experimentation, trial and error, and therefore cannot in practice be cleanly separated from performance. We may therefore caricature failed corporate competencies, and glorify those of a successful rival, even though they encompass tacit knowledge and dynamic learning, and are not either properly identified or reproducible. Given these limitations, the dynamic-capabilities approach explains and predicts best when building on relatively slow-moving trajectories.

Most notably and recently, so-called Web 2.0 technologies, which are based on user-generated content and social networking applications, provide information technology marketers with increasing challenges. Costly branding strategies employed by information technology marketers can easily be undermined by consumer reviews and blogs ...