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This paper sets out to review the literature of technology strategy, competitive advantage and sustainability of international business, in particular, the contribution that the enactment of technology strategy can make toward the effective implementation of business sustainability in the post-recession. It examines what kind of role technology strategy plays in Chinese business and how business sustainability could be leveraged through the implementation of appropriate technology strategy. This paper attempts to address various crucial issues in the establishment of a proper technology strategy for the sustainability of the business in the global market place based upon case study of five vanguard Chinese companies.

This exploratory study primarily adapts a qualitative multiple-case-study method which attempts to understand how Chinese firms perceive the role of technology strategy in their business, to capture the practical terms and concepts underpinning technology strategy and sustainability, and to allow us to have an analysis of the relationship between technology strategy and sustainability of business. Finally, ten propositions concerning “technology strategy and sustainability of business” are to be developed and verified along the theoretical development of the paper and examination of five cases. The nature of the study results that the paper applies qualitative method with a multiple-case-study approach, including Geely, Haier, TCL, Huawei and Lenovo.

This paper addresses the crucial issues – management of technology as basic function in international business and the close relationship between technology strategy and business sustainability. It showcases the Chinese business paradigm from “imitation to innovation” of how Chinese hi-tech firms built their core competence. This study provides fresh insights for multinational companies in creating competitive advantage through designing an appropriate technology strategy.

Theoretically this research fills the gap of an area of technology management which has been rarely touched. This will have strong implication not only to Chinese companies but also non-Chinese multinational companies.

Drawing on the literature of chief technology officer (CTO) and trusting relationship theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of trusting relationship of CTO‐chief executive officer (CEO) on the CTO's participation in technology strategy, based on empirical study of Chinese high‐tech firms, in order to maximize CTO's strategic decision‐making role. Taking into account the weight of power in Chinese culture, this study takes CTO's power distribution as moderator, to study whether it strengthens the impact of trusting relationship of CTO‐CEO on CTO's participation in technology strategy.

CTOs of high‐tech firms from Shanghai, Jiangsu, Shenzhen, Zhejiang and Beijing are taken as samples. A questionnaire survey is conducted by using random sampling method.

The results show that trusting relationships of CTO‐CEO has a significant positive impact on CTO's participation in technology strategy. The two dimensions of trusting relationships of CTO‐CEO, cognitive trust and emotional trust also have a significant positive impact on CTO's participation in technology strategy and each dimension of CTO's power distribution has a significant moderating effect on partial paths.

The results are analyzed from both the data level and theoretical level. Conclusions on the management inspiration of CEO and CTO in high‐tech firms are drawn.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize a learning‐based technology strategy along three dimensions: proactive technology posture, process adaptation and experimentation, and collaborative technology sourcing; also to investigate their relationships with plant competitiveness (cost, quality, delivery, flexibility, and innovation).

Hypothesized relationships are tested from three perspectives – direct effects perspective, co‐alignment perspective, and mediation perspective – using structural equation modeling with an international dataset.

Results show that although the three dimensions of learning‐based technology strategy are not individually related to plant competitiveness (direct effects perspective), their co‐alignment strongly impacts plant competitiveness (co‐alignment perspective). Furthermore, this co‐alignment creates an environment in which employee suggestion and feedback can help make sense of novel situations, leading to superior plant competitiveness (mediation perspective).

Many plants develop some aspects of a learning‐based technology strategy while paying little or no attention to the rest. As the findings of the present study show, such an approach will contribute very little to achieving competitive advantage in the marketplace. More specifically, it is shown that three dimensions of learning‐based technology strategy, when used together, have a significant effect on plant competitiveness. Additionally, it is shown that employee suggestions for improvements drive a learning‐based approach to technology strategy. Therefore, managers should adopt a comprehensive approach to technology strategy using all three dimensions and engage their employees in the process of technology development and improvement.

The literature has stressed the need for proactive technology posture, process adaptation and experimentation, and collaborative technology sourcing to gain competitive advantage. However, little is known about their mutual interdependence and their combined impact on plant competitiveness. This paper attempts to fill in this gap in the literature.

The aim of this study is to investigate how knowledge, information, and technology management strategies influence an organization’s financial performance with a focus on the manufacturing industry.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Information technology use, especially when combined with decentralized decision-making, shows significantly higher productivity. Managers may significantly improve a firm’s financial productivity by effectively using information resources and technology management. An organization’s financial performance is directly dependent on its information management and technology management strategies. And knowledge management strategies indirectly and positively influence financial performance via mediation.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to distinguish and describe knowledge management (KM) technologies according to their support for strategy.

This study employed an ontology development method to describe the relations between technology, KM and strategy, and to categorize available KM technologies according to those relations. Ontologies are formal specifications of concepts in a domain and their inter‐relationships, and can be used to facilitate common understanding and knowledge sharing. The study focused particularly on two sub‐domains of the KM field: KM strategies and KM technologies.

”KM strategy” has three meanings in the literature: approach to KM, knowledge strategy, and KM implementation strategy. Also, KM technologies support strategy via KM initiatives based on particular knowledge strategies and approaches to KM. The study distinguishes three types of KM technologies: component technologies, KM applications, and business applications. They all can be described in terms of ”creation” and ”transfer” knowledge strategies, and ”personalization” and ”codification” approaches to KM.

The resulting framework suggests that KM technologies can be analyzed better in the context of KM initiatives, instead of the usual approach associating them with knowledge processes. KM initiatives provide the background and contextual elements necessary to explain technology adoption and use.

The framework indicates three alternative modes for organizational adoption of KM technologies: custom development of KM systems from available component technologies; purchase of KM‐specific applications; or purchase of business‐driven applications that embed KM functionality. It also lists adequate technologies and provides criteria for selection in any of the cases.

Among the many studies analyzing the role of technology in KM, an association with strategy has been missing. This paper contributes to filling this gap, integrating diverse contributions via a clearer definition of concepts and a visual representation of their relationships. This use of ontologies as a method, instead of an artifact, is also uncommon in the literature.

Numerous biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms have undergone considerable changes and adapted to the challenge of developing sustainable products and services. However, few studies have explored the factors that contribute to the success of external innovation and value co-creation strategies adopted by biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms. The purpose of this study is to examine how biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries use value co-creation strategies to obtain external resources.

This study developed a conceptual framework based on the relevant literature. The study applied a resource-based approach, dynamic capability theory and a qualitative multiple-case study design to investigate several research questions; semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives from 11 biotechnology/pharmaceutical firms in Taiwan, and the data extracted from the interview content were axially coded.

This study revealed that factors such as dynamic marketing capabilities and process optimization contributed to the success of the aforementioned strategies; several propositions were also developed on the basis of the literature review and coded data, thereby providing insights regarding the relative efficacy and propriety of various external innovation and value co-creation strategies and models in various situations and contexts. Firms and technology providers might enter a technology licensing agreement, establish a joint venture company; participate in a merger/acquisition depending on their size, research and development capabilities; or goals and time- and cost-related factors.

The main original contributions of this study are the proposed conceptual framework and the insights provided regarding the relative efficacy and propriety of different external innovation and value co-creation strategies and models in different situations and contexts.

This study aims to empirically examine the conditions for latecomers to successfully pursue path-creating catch-up strategies. In particular, the company is divided into two conditions: the external environment, which refers to the gap in the market share between the leaders and latecomers, and the internal capacities of the company, such as the company’s absorptive capacity, re-combinative capabilities and technological innovation leadership.

Because firms supported by the government tend to be conservative in their decision-making and technology development strategies, governmental assistance is likely to negatively affect path-creating catch-up strategies. This study surveyed small to medium enterprises in the Korea IT industry and analyzed the latecomers’ catch-up strategies from internal and external environment perspectives.

After ensuring its innovation capacity by developing of internal capacity, it turned out to lead to path-creative catch-up strategy and market disparity and government dependence moderates this relation. While market disparity has a positive moderation effect, government dependence showed a negative moderation effect.

The authors proposed and tested hypotheses of how a firm’s path-creative catch-up strategy is adopted and succeeds. Regarding the internal conditions, the authors statistically proved that absorptive capabilities, re-combinative capabilities and technology innovation leadership are important factors for a firm’s technology innovation capacity.

This study aims to empirically investigate the relationship between enterprise risk management (ERM) and information technology (IT) security within the financial sector.

Risk officers of financial institutions licensed by the Central Bank of Ghana constituted the sample frame. A structured questionnaire was used to elicit data from the respondents. The structural equation modeling method was employed to analyze the hypothesized model.

The results revealed that ERM has a strong positive substantial effect on IT security within financial institutions. However, organizational culture failed to moderate the relationship between ERM and IT security.

A well-managed risk helps to eliminate ineffective, archaic and redundant technology as the originator of rising perils and organizational concerns in today's corporate financial institutions since ERM established a substantially strong positive correlation among the variables.

ERM studies in the African context are rare. This paper adds to contemporary literature by providing a new perspective toward the understanding of the relationship between ERM and IT security, especially in the financial industry.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of Industrial Management & Data Systems is split into six sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Manufacturing strategy and production; Business process management ; Research and development; Industrial design; Quality management; Information systems.

The purpose of this paper is to study how knowledge management strategy (KMS), technology management strategy (TMS), and information management strategy (IMS) influence an organization’s performance.

The authors use manufacturing data and employ causal modeling, with structural equation modeling, which will enable managers to understand the interrelationships among the use of information, knowledge management, and technology strategy in manufacturing enterprises.

There are two major findings of the research: first, an organization’s financial performance (FINP) is directly dependent on its information management and TMSs, and second, KMSs indirectly influence FINP via mediation.

Managers should be aware of various roles that TMS, IMS, and KMS play on an organization’s performance. The model analysis provides a direction to decision makers in understanding various intricate relationships through which information, technology, and KMSs could impact corporate sustainability.

First, the authors present a specific approach to capture and model information-related strategies in a powerful decisions support system framework. Second, the modeling environment provides examination of non-linear relationships among latent variables, as well as examining additive, moderating, and mediating relations so that other modelers could replicate the experiment in other sectors or enterprises. Last, this work addresses one of the major problems in manufacturing research: the lack of empirical research in sustainability development. The paper shows empirically that both TMS and IMS impact organization’s performance directly and KMS does so indirectly.