Technology Strategy and Firm’s Revenue Growth: Empirical Evidence of Malaysian Industrial Automation Industry

Abstract

Technology strategy was found by many researchers as a way to improve competitiveness. Failure to develop and integrate technology strategy and business strategy is a major contributing factor to the decline of firm’s competitiveness. Many literatures also indicated that technology strategy played an important role in determining firm performance in technology-driven industries such as industrial automation company. However, most of the previous studies have generally focused on the structure-conduct-performance theory which emphasized greatly on external factors (i.e market condition and competitors) to link strategies to firm performance. Very few studies were found to link strategies with the internal factors. Thus, the present study was undertaken to relate strategic view and resource-base view theory to the firm performance of industrial automation company looking at technology selection, technology competence, technology posture and the moderating effect of the resource deployment. The empirical result based on 61 Malaysian industrial automation company found that, technology selection has positive impact towards revenue growth (measuring firm’s performance). However, technology posture was found to be a negative predictor towards revenue growth and technology competence has no significant impact on revenue growth. Resource deployment on the other hand was identified to only moderate technology selection and technology posture but not technology competence