TECHNOLOGICAL COMPETENCIES AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN THE SPANISH ELECTRICITY INDUSTRY: NEW CHALLENGES, NEW TOOLS

Abstract

Recently, the electricity industry in Spain has experienced a deep transformation, aimed to improve the degree of concurrence between the operating firms. This change must be explained in the framework of the regional integration of markets with an European scale. The European Union is shaped as a relevant region in the world energy (and specifically, in electricity) market. Facing this change, the Spanish electricity firms must adopt a wider business vision, to cope with all the aspects of the new competitive environment in order to obtain business success. Firms, following the resource-based view, must generate and strengthen the competitive advantage derived from its core competencies. Those competencies, that constitutes the base for the inter-firm heterogeneity, are created (and evolve) from several mechanisms of organisational learning. Our research tries to show what the business vision of the Spanish electricity firms is, based on the efficient management of its personal, technological and organisational competencies. We have focused on technological competencies, because, in a more competitive scheme, they can support the sustained competitive advantage of the firm. So, we develop a model based on the Strategic Matrix of Technological Competencies (SMTC). The model is tested with a sample of 20 Spanish electricity firms (representing 71.25% of the industry total turnover in 1996). That matrix combines, in a dynamic sense, several scenarios and strategic business units in order to determine the critical technological competencies that the firm must master in each economic situation. The empirical analysis developed concludes (for the firms in the sample), among other issues, the existence of statistical relationships between certain technological competencies (as "Clean Use of Coal", "Advanced Technologies for Control and Communication", and "Electricity Transmission Technologies"), and several sources of competitive advantage (as the "The firm must difficult its resources' imitability"). In conclusion, facing the new competitive environment (in Spain and in the EU), technological competencies are considered by those firms as sources of competitive advantage. These competencies evolves using several organisational learning systems adopted by the firm. In this changing environment, the SMTC can be a relevant tool for the strategic management of the firms in the electricity industry.