The Role of Dynamic Capabilities in Firm-Level Technology Adoption Processes: A Qualitative Investigation

Abstract

Increasingly, marketers rely on advances in technology to maintain competitive parity or gain competitive advantage. Yet, often, the adoption of technology is met with suboptimal results and even outright failure. Qualitative field research based on depth interviews with business managers responsible for technology adoption decisions within their respective firms is used to develop a theoretical framework explaining the technology adoption process within firms, how expectations are formed for the innovation’s performance and factors that can further influence those perceptions. Result suggest a firm’s dynamic capabilities play a central role in informing the firm’s perceptions of a technological innovation’s characteristics that drive the adoption decision. Findings also suggest that a firm’s expectations are influenced by perception of risk, internal micro-political actions, and the opportunity to observe or trial use of the technological innovation.

Keywords

• technology adoption
• dynamic capabilities
• micro-politics
• absorptive capacity
• diffusion of innovations
• sense and response capabilities
• technological opportunism
• qualitative