Industrial modernisation initiatives: a technology transfer, organisational learning, and knowledge management perspective

Abstract

Small manufacturing firms typically lack the necessary resources, such as money, information, and expertise, to upgrade their operations, resulting in low innovation rates, missed opportunities, and under-investment in productive technologies and best practices. In today's hyper-competitive marketplace, it is pivotal for firms to master the art of integrating disparate sources of knowledge. Managing knowledge requires a complex combination of new tools, infrastructures, intellectual capital, processes, strategies, and their coexistence and integration with the existing ones. The lack of adequate private assistance mechanisms for small firms has been sought to be compensated through public industrial modernisation initiatives across the US and the world to promote the diffusion and successful deployment of new technologies and business practices among small industrial firms. This paper uses three overlapping yet complementary perspectives that would motivate and direct a strategic reorientation of such public assistance initiatives.