The central question of this thesis is how should the managers and technologists of technological organisations decide on how to invest in the co-evolution of technologies and adapt their influences to the evolution of their organisational capabilities by knowing the benefits, opportunities, costs and risks of such an investment? In the context of this research the main drivers are recognized as: - Variation in the accuracy and quality of technology - Changing market and instability in the demand for technology - Huge cost with less revenue from the technology - Increasing influence of regulations The issue of particular interest within this question includes creating a solution method for decision makers so that they can create value for their organisations by making a less risky investment decision in technology evolution, under the conditions that will be relevant to the next generation of technologies. The research work uses a case study approach within the context of the UK mobile industry in order to answer the basic and problem-oriented questions, by which; 1. the characteristics of the future technological evolutions within which the next generation of technologies must be operated are identified. 2. related theories are identified in respect of the value creation for organisations with evolving capabilities in response to the dynamic environment. 3. emphasis is placed upon the contribution of the technology co-evolution towards the evolution of organisational capabilities, as a result of a critical view of the concept of dynamic capabilities. 4. a basis is developed for the need of a solution method, consistent with the characteristics of the next generation of technologies, which respond to the current limitation of the theory of the dynamic capabilities, that must be overcome to achieve new requirements of the technology evolution. The output from the research work includes: I. A new framework, which exploits distinct technological roles: component, product and applications, support and infrastructure and integrates these technological capabilities from internal and external industries, following the four stages evolutionary cycle, including variation/reconfiguration, selection/search/learning, replication/leveraging, retention/integration. In this research, this new framework is called an evolutionary framework. II. A new set of 52 factors which are organized with respect to their clusters: technological evolution (TE), organisational evolution (OE), resource evolution (RE); their drivers: accuracy and quality of technology, market demand for technology, cost of technology, self and governmental regulations; and their merits: benefits, opportunities, costs, risks. In this research, this new set of factors is called an evaluation method. The fusion of the above concept and method places a new model, called the Dynamic Technological Capability model, within the context of technological organisations such as the UK mobile operators. The basis of the DTC model is that the exogenous industries are forcing the technology co-evolution, even if the previous generation of technologies remained unsuccessful in the dynamic market. To overcome the problems of making a less risky investment decision in the next generation of technology under such circumstances, the decision makers must have a model through which they can take measures of the investment decisions in the form of the benefits, opportunities, costs and risks values before making any investment decision. These novel aspects of the DTC model are illustrated by applying it to the UK mobile operators: Vodafone, Orange and O2, for the process of making an investment decision in the next generation of Location Based Services (LBS), called Assisted-Global Positioning System (A-GPS) technology.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:493332 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Bhutto, Arabella |
| Publisher | University of Nottingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10588/ |
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