A model of the effects of technical consultants on organizational learning in high-technology purchase situations

Abstract

Despite the fact that it is widely acknowledged that both organizational learning and the purchasing of high-technology products are important areas for study, it is surprising to find that little, if any, research has explicitly linked them together. Accordingly, the major motivation of this study is to begin to address this gap in the literature by developing a model that is based on a review of the extensive literature on organizational buying behavior, organizational information search, and organizational learning. Moreover, a key contribution of this research is to incorporate the effects that outside technical consultants are likely to have on the processes of information search and organizational learning in firms purchasing high-technology products. The inclusion of the effects of consultants is important because many scholars argue that such hired experts are likely to have a pronounced effect on organizational learning in a variety of high-technology contexts.