“WHAT IS TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AND HOW TO MANAGE IT”

Henrik Bruun and Janne Hukkinen in their article 'Crossing Boundaries: An Integrative Framework for Studying Technological Change' are set to outline the contours of a comprehensive framework, composed of EE, SCOT, and ANT, to serve for the study of technological change. The authors analyse EE, SCOT, and ANT in terms of the connections between the three approaches and their potential to complement each other. According to them the value of such an integrative framework is that it helps students of technology to choose research approaches. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the validity of using such a integrative framework as a tool for history of design studies.

IFAC Proceedings Volumes, 2001

This paper presents an example of a less known socially appropriate approach for managing technological change that is able to empower individuals, teams and even larger social groups to become more competent in coping with changes and consequent social instabilities brought about by the introduction of new technology. An original approach and methodology, both called COPIS, are shortly described that can serve for teaching people the required Change-Management knowledge in the fonn of typical workshops and through performing practical projects. The reported approach has been successfully used in the post-socialist countries of the Balkan region.

Journal of Tertiary Education Administration, 1986

Committee has sought to introduce technological change in a rapid and controlled manner over the last five years. As an expert computer scientist, Professor Sale will also discuss future developments in information technology and its likely impact on tertiary institutions in the coming decade.

WORKING PAPERS SERIES IN THEORETICAL AND APPLIED ECONOMICS, 2008

Word Count: 5,616 Technology evolution refers to changes in production processes or institutional arrangements that make it possible with a fixed set of resources to produce either (1) a greater quantity of a given product or service or (2) to produce new or qualitatively superior products or services. Technology evolution is the primary cause of rising living standards in modern economies, and the divergence of technological capabilities across countries is the chief reason for international differences in living ...

Economics Letters, 1987

This paper presents a new method for testing for technological change. The innovation here is the introduction of a production function which is sufficiently flexible to detect the change. The production function is assumed to be a function not only of the relevant inputs but also of technology-changing parameters.

2008

The introduction of new process technologies can cause significant disruption to ongoing operations. This paper examines the sources of such disruption and attempts to identify organizational response mechanisms effective in countering them. To better understand the nature of organizational tasks involved, two distinct characteristics of technological change -technical complexity and systemic shift -are identified. Results from a study of 48 new process introduction projects suggest that these characteristics are associated with the duration of disruption experienced. Traditional economic measures of project scope are shown to be relatively poor indicators of disruptive potential. Further, the organization's response to the introduction, both before and after physical installation of the new equipment, is an important determinant of project success in terms of both disruption experienced and operating gains achieved. However, evidence is presented to indicate that different kind...

The purpose of this research paper is to understand technological change that had taken place in the higher education institution when the record management software was upgraded to the newer version. This paper involves the literature of change management principles including Kurt Lewin change model, Kotter eight steps to transforming organisation, behavioural change, and force field analysis. These principles are being applied while analysing the case study of British University in Dubai upgrade of record management software. The findings through analysis show the widest gap that exists between the forces of changes and the appropriate action plan to make the changes work for better. The stages of changes are explained in detail during the transitional period of time. The university can adapt the study in order to understand what went wrong and apply the recommendation to successfully complete the transition process of software upgrade. Several methodologies were applied in this paper including primary quality research where the researcher interviewed the staff members of The British University in Dubai in particular the Head of Student Administration to evaluate the changing pattern during the software upgradation. Also the literature review section was used to study and analyse change management principles.

Human choice and climate change, 1998

Erkenntnis, 1989

Economic analysis has given rise to several conflicting accounts of technology and of the rate and directions of technological change. In this paper we examine some of the contrasting images of technology that have arisen in economics and we discuss some of the conceptual and methodological questions connected with the study of technological change (TC for short). We argue for a microeconomic approach in which TC is considered against the background of industrial, institutional and market structures. But we suggest that attempts to introduce into this framework cognitive models of scientific progress are doomed to failure, because of the fundamental differences between scientific and technological knowledge and the basic disanalogies between TC and scientific progress. In particular, we argue that the efforts of and others to treat technology and TC in a Kuhnian framework, by applying notions like technological paradigm, normal technology, and technological revolution, are misleading. By contrast, we hold that, given the influence of economic markets, industrial and institutional structures on the development of technology, it is more plausible to regard TC as a continuous and incremental process, rather than as suffering Kuhnian crises and revolutions. The paper is organised as follows. Section 1 introduces some basic concepts needed for the analysis of technological change. Section 2 contains some general remarks on technology in economics and reviews some of the main macroeconomic growth theories. In Section 3, we turn towards the more 'applied' perspective of microeconomic analysis, within the theory of the firm and industrial organisation, with emphasis on the recent work of Nelson and Winter (e.g., 1982). In Section 4 we deal with the conceptual relations between science and technology and the general question of the applicability of Kuhn's model of scientific change to TC. This serves as a basis for examining in Section 5 Dosi's approach to TC which embeds elements of Erkenntnis 30 (1989) 101-127. O 1989 by Kluwer Academic Publishers. M. R. DI NUCC1 PEARCE AND D. PEARCE microeconomic analysis within a Kuhnian conceptual framework. Lastly, in Section 6, we discuss what seems to be a basic principle governing TC which we call the principle of industrial-technological continuity. 1. TECHNOLOGY: The study of technology and technological change is a hybrid discipline that provides a natural meeting ground for philosophers, economists, sociologists and historians of the engineering and applied sciences. This is all to the good. Interdisciplinary research and the pooling of methods and expertise from different fields should lead to a better understanding of technological progress and its impact on society. Yet because of its hybrid nature, the study of technology is characterised by distinct and often contrasting research traditions. They diverge not only in their methodologies, but in their basic terminologies too. Even within a single discipline like economics, conceptual differences are striking, beginning with the notion of technology itself for which there is no universally accepted definition. Sometimes even compatible accounts of TC look very different from one another because they employ the concept of technology in a wider or narrower sense. Starting from the original meaning of technology as a body of knowledge about techniques, we can regard technological change as consisting of new knowledge about such techniques, and think of technological progress as comprising a special case of technological change. Following Freeman (1979), we distinguish technological from merely technical change, since the latter need not involve essentially new knowledge, but may refer simply to the adoption or diffusion of existing or improved techniques. 1 Borrowing a now standard classification first used by Schumpeter, TC can be analysed through the sequence invention -innovationdiffusion. The invention phase can be seen as related to the sphere of R&D. Research is directed at the enlargement of present knowledge and can be subdivided into basic and applied research. The stage of development deals with the application of research results (e.g., for the construction of prototypes and models), and should lead to an extension of the technical horizon, or of the technology, considered as the state of technical knowledge of an economy. The phase of innovation