ICT Firms Research Articles

Knowledge sharing processes in Tunisian small ICT firms

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how knowledge and information is shared by small information and communication technology firms in Tunisia.Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs a comparative case study approach. This was intended to collect data that describe processes and also to elicit information about the reasons for these processes. The authors set the study in the context of a developing country.Findings – It was found that information and knowledge is key to the operational success of these companies. Knowledge, and its application, is crucial to their competitive advantage. The companies have developed very useful internal systems for sharing information. They also have efficient methods for tapping into existing external knowledge. However, evidence was also found of immature national information sharing systems. The authors attribute this to the level of development in Tunisia and to the understandable attitudes of the firm owners.Research limitations/implications – W...

More ICT firms join EU drive to cut energy use

More ICT firms join EU drive to cut energy use

SEIZING THE OPPORTUNITY OF PARADIGM SHIFTS: CATCH-UP OF CHINESE ICT FIRMS

The emergence of latecomer firms from East Asia in high-technology sectors is one of the most striking phenomena of world economy in the past decades. However, while most literature focuses on the catch-up of Korea and Taiwan, we know relatively little about the practices in China, especially the firm-level experiences. Based on in-depth case analyses of three Chinese ICT firms from exploratory and evolutionary perspectives, we attempt to locate the window of opportunity for Chinese ICT firms to catch up with forerunners and identify strategies they employed to seize the window of opportunity. Our research findings suggest that paradigm shifts provided these latecomers with an opportunity to penetrate the market and universal standards or new technologies from other domains serve as the window of opportunity for latecomers to surpass forerunners. This study also reveals that technology-market combination as well as other strategies including niche market proposition, service innovation, collaborative R&D and leveraging complementary technologies can be utilized as effective approaches to realize catch-up.

The determinants of technology innovation in ICT firms

The determinants of technology innovation in ICT firms

The Estonian Tiger Leap from Post-Communism to the Information Society: From Policy to Practice

Estonia's post-communist transformation has been marked by several parallel processes, such as democratization, economic liberalization and the rise of consumerism. Another crucial component has be...

Distinctive proximities : between implicit and explicit knowledge in ICT and biotechnology innovation

This paper reports upon ESRC-funded findings on regional innovation and knowledge spillovers arising from a research spotlighting UK ICT and biotechnology firms. It appraises the basic question as to whether UK firms in clusters perform better on growth and innovation indicators than similar firms not in clusters. It also offers an advance in our understanding of the persistence and conceivable reinforcement of an asymmetric economic geography of prosperity and accomplishment, in an evolving and intensifying knowledge economy, science-driven and otherwise technologically sophisticated economic activity that gives rise to demands upon industry organisation that reinforce collaborative activity among smaller knowledge-intensive businesses.

The effects of cash flow and size on the investment decisions of ICT firms: A dynamic approach

This paper examines one of the fastest growing industries in our world today, the ICT industry. We assess the sensitivity of a firm’s investment to a set of financial determinants, by developing a flexible adjustment dynamic model. In particular, we examine the degree to which a firm’s liquidity influences firm investment and whether firm size and firm specialization have any additional implications. Moreover, the effect of the dot-com burst is also considered. For a panel of ICT and non-ICT US companies listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, the results reveal the following: (1) all firms are sensitive to the availability of internal funds; (2) investment intensity decreases with firm size; (3) and leverage negatively affects investment for ICT firms.

Developing a Culture for Entrepreneurship in the East of England

Most UK Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) have committed themselves to developing an Enterprise Strategy for their region. This commitment is mainly in response to the current Labour government's keenness to see enterprise and entrepreneurship at the centre of any economic development agenda. Pro-entrepreneurship policies have been embraced as a means of generating economic growth and diversity, ensuring competitive markets, helping the unemployed to create jobs for themselves, countering poverty and welfare dependency, encouraging labour market flexibility and drawing individuals out of informal economic activity. The regional dimension of economic regeneration has been influenced, in part, by increasing interest in the local ramifications of national innovation and entrepreneurship policies, and also by growing awareness of the local or regional phenomenon of enterprise creation and innovation. The authors examine the connection between R&D activities in universities and the creation of new businesses (in particular ICT firms), and especially the role that social capital plays in fostering these relationships or connections. Preliminary empirical analyses suggest the importance of university–high-tech industry social capital in generating technology based start-ups. The findings suggest a case for fostering ‘connectedness’ between research universities and high-technology firms in regions with interest in technology-based entrepreneurship.

Economic liberalisation for high-tech industry development? Lessons from China's response in developing the ICT manufacturing sector compared with the strategies of Korea and Taiwan

This paper argues that China's response to economic liberalisation, which artificially focuses on promoting particular sizes of firms, cannot improve technological capabilities in the ICT manufacturing industry. Not only have historical and economic conditions created difficulties in adopting Korean and Taiwanese style policies, but also competitive ICT firms in the global economy are increasingly moving from manufacturing to innovation activities against a backdrop of increasing economic liberalisation. Given the WTO and ITA agreements, the main path which Korea and Taiwan employed is now unavailable. The government therefore should leave the size of firms to market forces.

Strategies of ICT Firms in Developing Countries: Strategic Group Analysis on Tunisia's Software and IT Service Industry

This article reports on an investigation of firm strategies in the software and information technology service industry in Tunisia. The research contributes to the ongoing discussion on competitiveness of information and communication technology businesses in developing countries. It is based on the results of a survey conducted in 2004 with software and information technology service companies in Tunisia looking at their strategy implementation, utilization of external input factors, market focus and global reach. The article presents an analytical framework for the quantification of competitive challenges through the concept of strategic groups which clusters the industry structure along patterns and barriers in the strategic space of firms. The analysis identifies six groups, and discusses their competitive positions along the different patterns of diversification, internationalization and corporate control. The article argues that the view on the heterogeneity of the industry structure is key to an enhanced understanding of competitiveness. The results show that the concept of the strategic space of the software and information technology service industry and its challenges in Tunisia may be captured to some extend by prior research. Nevertheless, the complexity of the strategy construct still conceals much of the true sources of performance and international success that are frequently discussed at both the economic and business policy level.

Striving Towards R&D Collaboration Performance: The Effect of Asymmetry, Trust and Contracting

This paper examines the effects of trust, asymmetry and contracting in R&D collaboration. At best, asymmetry brings major benefits to collaborating firms, but it may also become the basis of dissimilar orientation towards informal and formal governance methods, which makes managing the collaboration and reaching goals more complex. These issues are studied among 87 small Finnish ICT firms and the findings indicate that drawing overly straight generalizations on the roles of trust, contracting and asymmetry in R&D collaboration is risky. They all are closely bound together, affect each other differently, and have multiple dimensions.

Rapidly with a Rifle or more Slowly with a Shotgun? Stretching the Company Boundaries of Internationalising ICT Firms

Small firms start operating internationally much more quickly than was previously the case. However, this requires that companies acquire resources and skills in a significantly shorter time than earlier. This paper discusses the pressures that such development puts on company boundaries from the viewpoint of Finnish ICT companies. Our findings indicate that the rapidity of internationalisation is positively correlated with the number of foreign partners but reverse to our expectations, i.e., the more partners the firm has, the slower its start of international operations. Additionally, the study confirmed that a rapidly internationalising firm has a narrowly defined core competence. Surprisingly, rapidly internationalising firms searched for partners with similar type of competence instead of complementary one. This indicates that the associations between core competence and rapid internationalisation deserves more attention.

TIC et réorganisation spatiale des activités économiques : introduction

This introduction focuses on the relation between economics of information and communication technologies (TIC) economics and spatial re-organization of economic activities. In the first time, we show the necessity of decomposition of the ICT sector and the weight of interactions and externalities in a network based economy. In the second time, we show that three questions have to be studied: the role of telecommunication networks and their diffusion in local development, ICT diffusion and re-organization of economic activities, and the peculiar case of the location of ICT firms. This introduction ends up by a short presentation of the contributions of this volume.

World Economy: Assessment

Over the course of the last six months or so, our analysis of what lies behind the recent global slowdown has changed somewhat. A year ago, we were anticipating a sharp slowdown in the US, which would ripple round the rest of the world through three main channels: trade, financial markets and confidence. Economies that were exposed to the US via trade, or which had close links with the US through their financial markets, or where confidence was anyway fragile, would be hit hardest. But the US would be hit hardest of all, being the primary source of the shock. Monetary and fiscal policy would loosen to offset the shock, but the impact of that loosening would be delayed, so some of the shock at least would be unavoidable. Since then, the US has slowed down sharply – in fact, rather more sharply than we expected - with the events of 11 September causing the slowdown to get worse. But the rest of the world has been hit at least equally hard. As outlined in the assessment article in the last World Economic Prospects, it is no longer appropriate to characterise the global slowdown merely as a US shock rippling around the world: rather it is a sharp, synchronised global slowdown, with all regions affected by similar factors. This article assesses the contribution of the boom-bust cycle in the ICT sectors globally to the recent slowdown – and to the pace of growth that preceded it. First of all, some definitions. For the purposes of this article, the information and communication technology sector includes both manufacturing and services. On the manufacturing side, it includes the production of PCs, other IT hardware (servers, semi-conductors, disks etc), and the production of mobile and land-line telephones, faxes, modems etc (but not radios, televisions etc). On the services side, it includes IT services such as hardware and software consultancy and software supply and data processing; and telecoms services such as consultancy plus the transmission of sound, images and data. Of course, the production of ICT equipment and services does not exhaust the wider contribution that the sector can make to overall activity, for four reasons. First, spending on ICT need not equal gross output: net trade in ICT can account for any discrepancy (though at a global level this discrepancy must sum to zero). Second, ICT firms undertake spending on non-ICT products: ICT manufacture involves intermediate inputs from a range of different non-ICT sources (both goods and services), and ICT firms also invest in plant and machinery and equipment of other kinds. Third, ICT equities represent a significant proportion of the total value of equities, so a collapse in ICT equity prices will have a direct impact on aggregate wealth, reducing consumption. Fourth, ICT firms are significant employers, so a collapse in their profits will involve widespread lay-offs, reducing average incomes directly and indirectly, by increasing the pool of unemployed and putting downward pressure on earnings. And fifth, the investment in ICT may have beneficial spillover effects on productivity economy-wide. However, in this article we restrict ourselves to estimating the direct impact on growth from ICT production in the US, Japan, the Eurozone and the UK over the period 2000 to 2002

Location and local networks of ICT firms in the Netherlands

Location and local networks of ICT firms in the Netherlands

The Determinants of Industrial Research and Development: A Study of the Chemical, Drug, and Petroleum Industries

Economists have recently grown interested in doing research on research or R & D, as it is called in industrial circles. Several studies have tested Schumpeter's hoary hypothesis that large firms are responsible for most industrial inventive activity.1 Few of these studies, however, suggest why this hypothesis is apparently valid for some industries and not for others. And statistical studies going beyond this question, to try to relate R & D expenditures to firm profit expectations and the availability of funds as in other investment decisions, are rare (Mansfield, 1964; Mueller, 1967). This paper reports the results of an empirical investigation into the determinants of research expenditures in three industries-drugs, chemicals, and petroleum refining. These industries have three advantages for such a study: (1) they are among the leaders in total R & D expenditures; (2) most activity is concentrated in an appreciable number of large or moderately large firms; and (3) government support of research work is relatively small, so that decisions are more closely analogous to ordinary