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Technology Policy, Task Uncertainty and Organisational Performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

Alan S. Dunk
Affiliation:
School of Accounting, University of Western Sydney, Nepean, PO Box 10 Kingswood NSW 2747, Tel: +61 2 9685 9216, Email: a.dunk@uws.edu.au
Saeed J. Roohani
Affiliation:
Department of Accounting, Bryant College, 1150 Douglas Pike, Smithfield RI 02917-1284, USA Tel: 1 401 232 6168, Email: sroohani@bryant.edu

Abstract

Factors influencing organisational performance have attracted attention, both in the literature and in practice, as a means of responding to increasing market competition. One factor that may enhance performance is a technology policy and a number of organisations have implemented such policies. Technology policy proponents argue that a society's capacity for sustained technological innovation is crucial to its economic well being. The primary purpose of the present paper is to investigate the extent to which organisational performance is influenced by the use of a technology policy. Since the literature suggests that task difficulty and task variability may influence this relationship, the paper also examines these relationships. The results suggest there is an association between technology policy and performance and that this relation is influenced by task difficulty, but not task variability. The relationship between technology policy and performance seems to greater when task difficulty is high than it is when task difficulty is low.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 1998

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