Technology strategy in the Australian manufacturing industry: An empirical investigation of its position

A mail survey of manufacturing firms was conducted across Australia to investigate the degree of emphasis put by them on technology strategy. The study found that the emphasis on technology strategy ranked fifth from the top in a mix of six other organisational strategies. It is also perceived that the emphasis on technology strategy is going to increase further in the next few years but the ranking will remain unchanged. The study also investigated the level of effectiveness of technology strategy along with other strategies. The results indicate that technology strategy ranks the second after operations strategy in terms of its effectiveness in spite of its low emphasis relative to other organisational strategies. Within the technology strategy, in-house development of technology has received the highest level of emphasis followed by acquisition of new technology by firms which have adopted differentiation or focus generic strategies. The firms with cost leadership generic strategy, however, tend to put more emphasis on new technology acquisition. The respondents’ perceptions also suggest that in-house development of technology has been the most effective strategy in the past. An investigation of the relationship between technology strategy variables and organisational performance indicates that there are few significant correlations between sales growth in domestic market and use of CIM, FMS, and CNC machines. The correlations, however, are weak.; ;