| dc.description.abstract | Technology has been used extensively by many organizations to acquire a
competitive advantage over the competition. The gap in the study and particularly
basing in the Kenyan market environment is whether there really exist a link between
how the firms perform and the technology strategy in place. Therefore the objective
of this stu~y was to determine the relationship between technology strategy and
competitive performance in the telephony firms in Kenya. This study was carried out
on the three firms involved in the telephony industry in Kenya; Telkom, which
operates the fixed line system, Safaricom and Kencell which both operate in the
cellular system.
Pragmatic telephony professionals, accustomed to intense price competition and
focused on the bottom line, have difficulty justifying investments in advanced
technology. This study set out to find out the results of research to begin answering
the question, "does technology matter?"
This study indicated that a higher value for a number ofteclmology strategy
dimensions is associated with superior competitive performance. The findings were
that 23 of the 40 possible relationships between dimensions of technology strategy
and competitive performance illustrate a significant positive relationship. This number
of significant relationships determined in this analysis is far more frequent than could
have occurred by chance.
According to the analyzed data there is a strong positive correlation between the
number of subscribers and holding capacity of the switching equipment, software
version, number of base stations launched, number of trans-coders: (p=O.OO,O.963),
(p=0.444), (p=O.OO,O.939)and (p=O.895) respectively. The correlation coefficient
between sales turnover and the technology variable are also strong and positive,
except the software version whose coefficient is not significant and also negative.
These strong and positive correlations imply that a change in the level of technology
has a strong positive influence on the sales turnover of the companies.
The findings also indicate that the Average Revenue Per User as a measure of
performance has no significant relationship with the technology variables i.e. Holding
capacity of the switching equipment, software version, Number of base stations
launched, number of trans-coders: (p=.929,O.33), (p=.937,-O.029), (p=.707, -137),
(p=439,.276) respectively.
These results demonstrate clear technology strategy and competitive performance
relationships. These findings indicate that technology does matter. This led to the
conclusion that telephony industry managers should pay close attention to their
technology strategies in order to remain competitive.
Further research examining the causality of successful competitive performance of
telephony firms is warranted. The chicken-egg controversy described by Glueck and
Jauch (1984) merits investigation in telephony industry in Kenya, i.e., ifthose firms
that demonstrate a relatively higher technology strategy valuation are shown to be
more successful, does that show that technology strategy leads to success, or are those
that are more successful able to devote more attention to technology strategy? | en |
