The extant literature on technology transfer in capital-intensive industries suggests that since technical knowledge is already embodied in manufacturing equipment, developing countries that import equipment can produce products efficiently with economies of scale. However, for high-grade steel production, steel makers in emerging countries equipped with large-scale capital investment and state-of-the-art equipment capital investment continued to struggle. This paper insists that economic backwardness is limited for two reasons, technological and organizational, in the steel industry. First, the inter-process coordination is crucial to manufacture high-grade steel products such as automotive steel sheets. Second, since companies that introduce technologies lack knowledge and experience regarding new technologies, their learning process is variable. This paper explains how companies learn their new technologies in the process of introduction, assess their possible biases, and determine the time required for learning and relearning. From the standpoint of the introducing company, this paper defines ‘technology recognition,’ ‘recognition lag,’ and ‘learning lag.’
抄録全体を表示