MIT Sloan Management Review

Management of Technology and Innovation

Exploiting Opportunities for Technological Improvement in Organizations

By Marcie J. Tyre and Wanda J. Orlikowski

October 15, 1993

MANAGERS HAVE LEARNED THAT, TO EXPLOIT THE ADVANTAGES OF NEW PROCESS TECHNOLOGIES, THEY MUST ADAPT THOSE TECHNOLOGIES TO FIT THE organization and its strategy. But exactly how and when to make those changes is not well understood. The authors argue that technological improvement is seldom a steady process but instead alternates between short episodes of intensive change activity and longer periods of routine use. Data from European and U.S. firms show that adaptation to new technologies often occurs in a “lumpy” or episodic pattern. Examination of several leading Japanese organizations reveals a similar pattern, with one important difference: managers in these operations actively exploit the episodic pattern of adaptation around a given technology. Drawing on these observations, the authors suggest that managing the uneven pace of adaptation can yield important benefits to firms pursuing both efficiency and change.

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We often hear that companies must learn to embrace change. This is particularly true of companies that are applying advanced technologies to improve their competitive position. The full advantages of such technologies cannot simply be purchased off the shelf; they are won by patiently and carefully tailoring the technology to fit a given firm’s organizational and strategic context. At the same time, organizational skills, procedures, and assumptions within the firm need to be adapted to fit the new technology.1

Little is known, however, about how organizations actually go about modifying new process technologies, or how they adapt their own practices in response to technological change. Most of the research on this topic has assumed that users learn about and modify new technologies gradually. These assumptions have been built into our theories and images about technological adaptation — such as the familiar learning curve, which implies a highly regular accretion of improvements over time. The same assumptions are built into the prescriptions many researchers offer to management. These researchers exhort managers to “allow plenty of time” to digest new process technologies and to strive for “continuous improvement” (see Figure 1).

Yet most of the research on which these assumptions are based was performed at the aggregate level. Certainly, an entire firm or factory must... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.

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