Technology Firms Research Articles

A hybrid evolutionary game-theoretic and system dynamics approach for analysis of implementation strategies of green technological innovation under government intervention

Green technological innovation (GTI) is accompanied by a high level of risk and cost. Therefore, choosing the optimal strategy for its implementation has attracted the attention of decision-makers. In this regard, technological firms have two strategies: collaboration with green startups and performing independent green R&D. This paper analyzes the impact of maturity level and innovation level of green startups, as well as the competitive intensity between technological firms on their evolutionary behavior. For this purpose, an evolutionary game model was developed, and the impact of government static and dynamic intervention on the firms’ innovative behavior was investigated by the system dynamics. There are six possible stable equilibrium points. The results suggest that when the government adopts static intervention, at the same time, reducing the maturity level and increasing the innovation level of the green startups decreases technological firms' desire to collaborate with them. When the government adopts dynamic intervention, then it would be more desirable for the technological firms to collaborate with green startups. If a technological firm can increase its product sales compared to the competitor, this change will affect the evolution trend of the system. Increasing sale amounts by a technological firm leads to more own stability rate, decreasing it for its competitor.

Demystifying the role of absorptive capacity in achieving innovation-based performance: model development and empirical validation

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explicate the relationship between knowledge-based dynamic capacities (KBDC) and innovation-based performance (INPF) in information technology (IT) firms in India by examining the mediating impact of absorptive capacity (ABCP). The paper aims to determine whether and how the ABCP of the firms is recognized as the essential facilitator of INPF.Design/methodology/approachA survey of 511 respondents from Indian IT employees at the upper and middle management levels was undertaken. In this study, the partial least squares (PLS) technique explored the causal links between constructs with the use of the software application SMART-PLS 3.0.FindingsThe outcomes of this study proved the existence of a statistically significant relationship between the ABCP and INPF of information technology firms. Furthermore, ABCP's influence as a mediator between KBDC and INPF is significant. Therefore, findings imply that ABCP mediates the relationship between KBDC and INPF, however, only to some extent.Research limitations/implicationsWith the dynamism of the global market, the research has made significant gains in illustrating the criticality of ABCP for strengthening its KBDC in a much-needed Indian context. Therefore, following the recommendations and findings of this study, practitioners should concentrate on strengthening both ABCP and KBDCs to improve their INPF. To do this, managers must proactively organize their resources, procedures, and structure to promote knowledge absorption and dissemination, fostering innovation.Originality/valueIt is a ground-breaking study that proposes that the ABCP plays a crucial role in enhancing the INPF of the firms. The software industry will likely benefit from this study by understanding ABCP's potential impact on its INPF and designing knowledge management methods accordingly.

The effect of science and technology parks on tenant firms: a literature review

Science and technology parks (STPs) are non-spontaneous agglomerations aimed at encouraging the formation and growth of on-site technology and knowledge-based firms. STPs have diffused worldwide, attracting significant, and often public, investment. However, there are contrasting evidence and insights on the effectiveness of these local development, technology and innovation policy tools. This paper provides a comprehensive and systematic review of the STP literature (221 papers, 1987–2021), focusing especially on quantitative papers aimed at assessing the park effect on tenant’s performance. We perform an in-depth quantitative analyses, which allows us to go beyond the inconclusiveness reported in previous review papers, showing that the likelihood of finding positive STP effects increases considerably with sample size. We discuss the limitations of this literature and offer some suggestions for future research.

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Decision Support Model for Determining the Best Employee using Fuzzy Logic and Simple Additive Weighting

Specifically, for an information technology company, identifying the best employees (the best programmers) is valuable. The election is intended to improve the performance of the company's programmers. The company's performance will improve as programmers' performance improves. This study attempts to develop a Decision Support Model (DSM) to identify the best employees (i.e., programmers) in the firm. The model considered nine parameters (technical skills, problem-solving, communication skills, teamwork, discipline, work progress, time management, formal education, and informal education) by integrating the Fuzzy Logic (FL) with the Simple Additive Weighting method (SAW). This model is finally able to be benefitted by information and technology firms. This can eventually be used to assess and view employee evaluations, making it simpler for businesses to make key decisions (e.g., granting incentives, salary raises, or promotions). The model is based on data collected from ten company programmers (where six of them are real data). The model concludes that programmer 2 is the best employee in the firm, with a total score of 97.94, based on the suggestions from the constructed DSM.

PROBLEMS OF price REGULATION OF COMPETITION AND MONOPOLY IN THE XXI CENTURY

The article analyzes the peculiarities of the activities of five companies of technology giants, leading the world rankings, namely: Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook in order to identify/refute possible threats of abuse of these companies their monopoly position in the market. A critical analysis of the assessment of the monopoly position of these entities in the relevant markets for goods / services based on the classical approaches to the interpretation of the monopolies. It has been established that due to the inconsistency of traditional approaches to antitrust regulation of the current state of affairs, modern market leaders often cannot even be identified as monopolists. However, there are possible threats to the activities of giant technology firms. In particular, they may be related to modern highspeed, often veiled ways of collecting, processing and storing information, certain personal data, etc., and the possibility of using them in certain interests. A significant number of benefits that society receives from the activities of technology giant companies have been studied. Firstly, is the provision of free services for the use of information resources. Secondly, it is not setting high prices for advertising services. In any case, they are lower than in the real sector of the economy. In addition, over time, for loyal customers, advertising prices are constantly declining, and the effectiveness of advertising on social networks and the Internet is quite high. Thirdly, it is an opportunity to significantly save consumers when buying goods on Internet sites. It is noted that the difficulty of applying the concept of monopoly in the traditional sense of the term is that modern technology companies - giants often do not overestimate the price of their products, but rather provide their products / services at low prices or even free. Accordingly, such firms have a whole army of supporters. This suggests the obsolescence of existing antitrust law, its inability to regulate the activities of modern high-tech firms and, consequently, the need to develop more modern antitrust law.

Entrepreneurship Post-C19: Gender and Fnancing Abroad

Purpose. This study follows the trajectory in the United States and India of 35 entrepreneurs with similar backgrounds in India. It controls for irrelevant-to-this-study factors that impact financing and entrepreneurial paths, and sheds light into the at-times contradictory gender findings in the literature.
 Design/methodology/approach. The study is based on interviews with upper-middle class entrepreneurs from business-oriented Mumbai-Maharashtra, India. Out of the 35 highly educated entrepreneurs, one third are women, 21 have educational experience in the U.S. and 16 live in the U.S. This controlled setting is particularly fitting to examine gender effects and offer suggestions for the digitally led C-19 recovery. Indian immigrants have founded about a third of U.S. startups, besides more engineering and technology firms than immigrants born in the next nine immigrant-founder countries combined.
 Findings. Both in India and U.S., and despite similar backgrounds, education, no dependents, and similar or more advantageous immigration status in U.S., women entrepreneurs start their businesses later, lack collateral and equity partners, and borrow less. 
 Practical implications. The findings highlight the potential for debt and equity crowdfunding as well as other fintech services to enhance opportunities for women entrepreneurs. 
 Originality. This is the first study of gender and financing entrepreneurship in an intercontinental controlled environment. The setting enables an enhanced focus on gender and financing, a priority for academics, practitioners, and policy makers.

Interdisciplinary knowledge integration as a unique knowledge source for technology development and the role of funding allocation

This study examines the relationship between interdisciplinarity in knowledge integration (interdisciplinarity) for research and the extent to which the research serves as a unique knowledge input for technology development. To understand the role of the funding allocation therein, we additionally examine how research funding allocation shapes this relationship. To this end, we develop a simple bibliometric method to measure the uniqueness of research impact on technology development by using paper-patent citation network information. Our analysis of the metadata of over 0.7 million journal papers published in 2010 shows that the interdisciplinarity of research is positively associated with uniqueness in its contribution to technology development only when the research has funding support. We also find that interdisciplinarity in knowledge integration is positively associated with the non-unique impact of research on technology development regardless of funding support. Our findings suggest that interdisciplinary research may serve as a unique knowledge source for technology development, while the funding allocation process functions as an institutional instrument for selectively supporting interdisciplinary research that could have a unique technology impact. We discuss implications for science policymakers, research evaluators, and technology firms.

Manufacturing Managerial Compliance: How Firms Align Managers with Corporate Interest

Although the domain of labour process research is vast, few studies analyse compliance among managers. This article advances a neglected strand of analysis, focusing on how firms shape managerial actions. Organizational goals, such as downsizing, intensification, and reskilling, demand that professional managers cooperate and act in accordance with firm objectives, at times even at personal cost to themselves. To theorize this, I use the case of information technology (IT) firms in India that recently shed a large number of managerial jobs, fostering an environment of insecurity. Those who lost their jobs were positioned between lower-level employees and top management. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, I contribute a two-part framing that theorizes the dualities of the managerial subject position and how it is instrumentalized. The article foregrounds the intersection of managerial insecurity and managerial hierarchy, emphasizing how firms utilize these to meet organizational goals.

Taking Renewables to Market: Prospects for the After‐Subsidy Energy Transition

AbstractWith the cost of solar and wind technologies having declined, governments are scaling back the subsidies and guarantees that have historically supported the development of renewable power. The renewables sector is struggling to stand commercially on its own feet, however: without state support, it is often difficult for developers to secure project funding. This article examines both this growing challenge to the energy transition and a key mechanism to which developers are turning to try to resolve it—the corporate power‐purchase agreement (PPA). Under renewables PPAs, corporations such as technology firms contract to buy electricity for periods of up to 15–20 years. Often pivotal in unlocking development finance, PPAs have been hailed as re‐energising a faltering energy transition. But to rely on the purchasing habits of the likes of Amazon and Google to maintain the shift into renewables is to raise important political, economic and ecological questions.

Role of ICT for workers’ safety at the workplace during pandemics: evidence from global data

PurposeThis study contributes to the extant literature on ICT firms by investigating the interrelationship between the health and safety (H&S) measures, market performance, and the coronavirus (COVID-19).Design/methodology/approachTo conduct the confirmatory analysis by testing our hypotheses, data have been collected from Bloomberg of all ICT firms from five countries. The authors gathered from 2010 until 2020 as the research sample to examine the pandemic impact on market performance and H&S measures.FindingsFirst, our results reveal a significant and positive relationship between market performance (proxied by Tobin’s Q) and the H&S measures of information technology (IT) firms. Second, the authors find that the IT firms have significantly increased the H&S measures during the COVID-19 period and were dynamic in linking employees’ adaptive capabilities to positive attributes. This has contributed to business success, resiliency, and sustainability.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors used a quantitative method of testing our hypotheses. Future studies may consider checking the robustness using qualitative methods such as structural or semi-structural interviews.Practical implicationsThe study offers valuable insights to academics, practitioners, stakeholders, policymakers, and international entities by fostering knowledge about responses to crises, integrating digital solutions, and disseminating digital information. The study also has implications on the health, social, business, and economic levels. This study is a call for international and local humanitarian organisations such as United Nations High Commission, Care international and many more to understand the gravity of safety of the workers in the workplace during the pandemic period and introduce a firm-level policy accordingly.Originality/valueThis paper is novel considering that the paper is unique in evaluating ICT firms’ market performance and H&S from a global perspective, considering the context of this historical pandemic.

The Participation Status of Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Small African American-Owned Technology Firms in the Federal Assistive Technology-Research and Development Enterprise through STEM Pathways

PurposeThis article provided a comprehensive overview of the available peer-reviewed and grey literature on the current status of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and small African American-owned technology firms participation in the federal assistive technology research and development (AT-R&D) enterprise.Method Authors completed a historical review of the existing literature on HBCUs' participation in STEM academic pathways to AT-R&D; the contextual framework for HBCUs federal R&D barriers; STEM pathways to small African American Technology Entrepreneurship; and small African American-owned technology firms AT-R&D participation barriers.ResultsOverall, the review illuminated participation barriers experienced; exacerbated in part by narrow STEM pathways designed to help African American students successfully matriculate in related disciplines, institutional systematic barriers, a lack of funding priorities within federal research agencies, and the oversight of African American entrepreneurs in AT.ConclusionsThe authors presented recommendations that might be useful for developing proactive academic pipelines to AT-R&D. The literature review is among the first to examine HBCUs' participation in STEM pathways to federally-funded AT-R&D.

Knowledge Sharing Types as Predictors of Job Performance Mediated by Problem-Solving Self-Efficacy in the Information System Integration Service Industry.

Knowledge sharing is an essential approach to creative problem solving in technology firms, but few studies have considered the information system integration service industry. To address this gap, drawing on the micro-ecology theory, we developed a research model to explore the mediating role of four types of knowledge sharing (i.e., automatic response, rational reflection, ridiculed reflection, and stolen reflection) in the relationship between problem solving self-efficacy (PSSE) and IT workers’ job performance. Data were collected from 307 System Integration IT workers by using the snowball sampling method via a Google questionnaire. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses of the relationships between the variables. The results showed that PSSE can positively predict four knowledge sharing types; except for stolen reflection, the others can positively predict job performance. The implication of this study is that automatic response systems and rational reflection systems in knowledge sharing can enhance job performance, supported by PSSE. It is hoped that managers can generate System Integration workers’ rational reflection to effectively evoke knowledge sharing.

Corporate governance

Corporate governance is a centuries-old concept, but it has gained significant impetus in India during the last two decades. This article examines the corporate governance practises of Bangalore's top ten information technology firms. We discover that all information technology companies adopt some form of corporate governance, at the very least as stated in their annual reports to comply with regulatory obligations. We discover that corporate governance policies have a significant impact on a company's performance. We observe that the corporations have no immediate intentions to significantly alter their corporate governance processes.

Does technological innovation benefit energy firms’ environmental performance? The moderating effect of government subsidies and media coverage

Technological innovation can improve the resource efficiency and accelerate the transformation of energy production mode, which offers attractive opportunities for low-carbon development of traditional energy firms. However, whether technological innovation can generate a better environmental result for traditional energy firms remains to be explored. This paper develops a panel regression model to examine the effect of technological innovation on environmental performance of energy firms based on the data of 136 energy firms in China from 2009 to 2019. The results indicate that, first, technological innovation has significantly improved energy firms’ environmental performance, increasing environmental strengths by 0.056% and decreasing carbon emissions intensity by 0.015%. Second, these effects are weaker for energy firms with more government subsidies, providing new evidence for the removal of fossil energy subsidies. Finally, negative media coverage also significantly weakened the boosting effects of technological innovation on environmental performance, revealing a “dark side” of media coverage on environmental management of energy firms. These findings have practical implications for managers and government agencies to improve environmental performance of energy firms.

Co-producing industrial public goods on GitHub: Selective firm cooperation, volunteer-employee labour and participation inequality

The global economy’s digital infrastructure is based on free and open source software. To analyse how firms indirectly collaborate via employee contributions to developer-run projects, we propose a formal definition of ‘industrial public goods’ – inter-firm cooperation, volunteer and paid labour overlap, and participation inequality. We verify its empirical robustness by collecting networks of commits made by firm employees to active GitHub software repositories. Despite paid workers making more contributions, volunteers play a significant role. We find which firms contribute most, which projects benefit from firm investments, and identify distinct ‘contribution territories’ since the two central firms never co-contribute to top-20 repositories. We highlight the challenge posed by ‘Big Tech’ to the non-rival status of industrial public goods, thanks to cloud-based systems which resist sharing, and suggest there may be ‘contribution deserts’ neglected by large information technology firms, despite their importance for the open source ecosystem’s sustainability and diversity.

Humble Leadership and Team Innovation: The Mediating Role of Team Reflexivity and the Moderating Role of Expertise Diversity in Teams.

The current study proposes a moderated mediation model to explain the relationship between humble leadership and team innovation. Our hypothesis integrates social information processing (SIP) theory with the existing literature on humble leadership. As a result, we theorize that when a humble individual leads a team, the team members are more likely to reconsider strategies, review events with self-awareness, share diverse information, and adapt to new ideas, which in turn promotes innovative team activities. Moreover, consistent with the research that emphasizes the inclusion of team culture in exploring leader–innovation relationships, we investigate the moderating role of a team’s expertise diversity in the above positive, indirect relationship. We test our model by using both archival and survey data collected from 135 teams within 18 medium-to-large internet technology firms in China. The findings largely support our theoretical assertions, suggesting that humble leadership has important implications for team processes and innovation.

Adoption of Cloud Computing: A Key Performance Analytics for Financial and Technological Firms

Adoption of Cloud Computing: A Key Performance Analytics for Financial and Technological Firms

Gender Board Composition and Performance in Italian Start-ups

Literature on start-ups has mainly involved functional and education diversity of top teams; gender has been neglected, most likely because of the low presence of women in technological firms. Also, extant research has overlooked the role of female representation in start-ups’ boards, despite boards represent a key piece in the puzzle that enables the functioning and survival of new firms. Building on this gap, we aim to investigate the following research question: are gender-related variables in the board of innovative start-ups correlated with better performance? We employ a novel dataset of 3,257 Italian innovative start-ups founded between 2012 and 2018, and we run eight OLS regressions to estimate performance as a function of measures of female representation. Our results provide evidence of a positive relation of gender-related variables with performance. Specifically, we find that gender diversity is related to an efficient use of assets (ROA), while the shares and the number of females are related to an efficient use of capital (ROE). We also detect a non-linear exponential relation between the number of females in the board and ROE: as more women serve in the board, returns on equity grow more than proportionally. Our paper contributes to the literature on board composition and start-up performance by providing new evidence on the role of female representation.

How leader bottom-line mentality relates to employee innovation: a cross-layer model mediated by psychological contract breach

PurposeThis study aims to examine how and when leader bottom-line mentality (BLM) affects employee innovation (EI) in the context of Chinese organisations in which psychological contract breach (PCB) is a mediator and moral identity (MI) is a moderator.Design/methodology/approachThe authors distributed the questionnaires to technology and culture firms in 2 waves and obtained a sample of 308 employees in 56 teams. The authors used the hierarchical linear model (HLM) and bootstrap method for the hypothesis testing.FindingsThe authors conclude that leader BLM negatively influences EI. Specifically, leader BLM leads mainly to low EI by increasing PCB amongst employees. Moreover, MI plays a moderating role in the above mechanism, i.e. the higher the MI degree of employees, the stronger the mediating role of PCB and the stronger the negative impact of leader BLM.Practical implicationsThis study argues that BLM is necessary for firm development, but paying too much attention to BLM may achieve the opposite effect. Reducing BLM or buffering the negative impact of BLM through various measures (e.g. human resource management) is appropriate for managers.Originality/valueThe authors discover a new mechanism and boundary condition, i.e. leader BLM has a negative impact on EI through PCB and MI strengthens the effect of leader BLM.