Research On Key Factors Configuration Of Technology Catch-up In Latecomer Enterprises

The desynchronized development of global economy and technology makes catch-up animportant topic.Globalization raises the possibility of integrating resources including capital,technology and talent all over the world.Latecomer enterprises can accomplish technology catch-up in different ways.Some enterprises in China have closed the gap between international leading companies and have accomplished technology catch-up,overcoming the disadvantage of backwardness such as dominant design and industrial standard.However,a lot of enterprises are still at the low end of technology chain with poor catch-up performance.A single factor cannot fully support the catch-up while improving all factors seems too hard for latecomer enterprises.Research on factors configuration of technology catch-up is significant for the development of latecomer enterprises in China.Based on the sample cases of latecomer enterprises in China,this research attempt to find out the configurations of key factors which affect technology catch-up.On the basis of literature research and theoretical analysis,this paper uses the grounded analysis in multi-case study to process case data through open coding,axial coding and selective coding.Six factors including intentional organizational forgetting,strategy transition ability,resource governance width,resource governance depth,diversity of social needs and scale of social needs are identified as the key factors of technology catch-up in latecomer enterprises.And then three key factors configurations are found by fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis.These configurations are strong technical strategy orientation with strong resources governance,strong technical strategy orientation and deep resources governance with strong social construction and strong technical strategy orientation with large scale of social needs.The findings are as follows.First the factors impacting technology catch-up are in configuration with combined effect.More than one configuration can lead to catch-up and latecomer enterprises need to keep different factors in balance.Second technical strategy orientation plays a core role in the mechanism of configurations while social construction guides the configuration with the adaptation of resources governance.Third technological momentum makes a difference in sustainable competitiveness and latecomer enterprises should avoid the trap of technological momentum.This study enrich the theories related to technology catch-up and latecomer enterprises,providing a reference about what kind of factors to focus on and how to choose proper mode in technology catch-up for latecomer enterprises and the conclusions have practical significance.