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Technology transfer, outsourcing, capability and performance: A comparison of foreign and local firms in Ghana
Accepted Manuscript Technology transfer, outsourcing, capability and performance: A comparison of foreign and local firms in Ghana Kwaku Appiah-Adu, Bernard Okpattah, Justice Djokoto PII:
S0160-791X(16)30083-5
DOI:
10.1016/j.techsoc.2016.07.002
Reference:
TIS 947
To appear in:
Technology in Society
Received Date: 30 May 2016 Accepted Date: 18 July 2016
Please cite this article as: Appiah-Adu K, Okpattah B, Djokoto J, Technology transfer, outsourcing, capability and performance: A comparison of foreign and local firms in Ghana, Technology in Society (2016), doi: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2016.07.002. This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
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*Kwaku Appiah-Adu Professor of Strategy Dean of Central Business School Central University Accra, Ghana [email protected] [email protected]
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Technology Transfer, Outsourcing, Capability and Performance: A Comparison of Foreign and Local Firms in Ghana
(* Corresponding Author)
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Bernard Okpattah Lecturer Computer Science Department Lancaster University Ghana Accra, Ghana
Justice Djokoto Senior Lecturer Central Business School Central University Accra, Ghana
Submitted to: Technology in Society May, 2016
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Technology Transfer, Outsourcing, Capability and Performance: A Comparison of Foreign and Local Firms in Ghana
Abstract
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Owing to intense competition in today’s business environment, organisations that aspire to excel in their respective sectors need to develop the appropriate capabilities in order to gain and sustain a competitive edge. Outsourcing and technology transfer provide firms with the platform for developing capability to achieve superior performance in the marketplace.
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However, in the setting of a developing economy, the relative effects of outsourcing and technology transfer on corporate performance among foreign and local companies when investigated together in an amalgamated model is yet to be examined empirically. To obtain a
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deeper understanding, two pathways through which outsourcing and technology transfer enhance corporate performance of companies in Ghana are presented. Results of this research indicate differences in the extent to which outsourcing and technology transfer influence capability and subsequently affect corporate performance. Limitations of this study as well as implications of the findings for managers and researchers are ultimately highlighted.
Introduction
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Keywords: Outsourcing; Technology transfer; Capability; Corporate performance; Ghana
Heightening competition, liberalisation of world economies and globalisation have captured
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the attention of entrepreneurs and business executives to develop sustainable strategies upon which distinctive competencies can be built. Thus, in today’s marketplace, business success
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or mere survival hinges on an organisation’s ability to improve everything it does. Companies primarily have a fiduciary responsibility but while executing that task, consistently improving and deploying innovative strategies to reduce the lead time and cycle is a prerequisite.
Internal environmental scanning to identify a firm’s strengths and weaknesses as well as the inevitable threats and opportunities available will serve as a wake-up call to firms since business entities must engage in cost saving activities while minimizing risks and maximising returns for shareholders and survival. Outsourcing among several other strategies are tools that both multinational corporations and indigenous firms can deploy because arguments in favour of outsourcing highlights its primary cost-saving capability. 1
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Presently, one of the most noticeable global economic trends is outsourcing of activities previously carried on in-house and by definition, outsourcing refers to the purchasing from an external supplier of a function previously carried out within the company (Oshri and
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Kotlarsky and Willcocks, 2015, Bernhardt, Batt, Houseman, and Appelbaum, 2015). Firm’s decision to contract out production include labour cost savings, scale economies, technology, the lack of domestic skilled labour and the availability of qualified middle management in the host country (Abraham and Taylor, 1996; Grossman and Helpman, 2002; Girma and G¨org, 2004; Tomiura, 2004; Diaz-Mora, 2005; Bartel, Lach, and Sicherman, 2005; Antras,
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Garicano, and Rossi-Hansberg, 2006). Multinational Corporations (MNCs), therefore, can focus and zero in on activities that can be carried out better than competitors augmented with
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some amount of outsourcing to achieve the desirable outcome; that is, business performance.
Among the wealth of options available to companies in building know-how and improving business performance is technology transfer, a term typically applied to the external procurement of technology from one player to another within or across national boundaries (Battistella, De Toni and Pillon, 2015; Zhenhua and Yao, 2015). The movement of technology may involve physical assets, know how, and technical knowledge (Bozeman,
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2000). Lundquist (2003) used the term technology transfer and the movement of a set of capabilities simultaneously, thus the usage of technology transfer after acquisition creates capability. Technology transfer assumes a dual role of building capabilities and improving business performance because it has an element of inimitable embedded knowledge that is
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only exclusive and distinctive to the transferee only.
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In order for long term businesses sustainability, it is not enough for firms to develop and master a single capability but to meet the ever-changing customer needs and implement a viable business model, corporations must integrate a whole system of organizational capabilities.
Study Justification Earlier research has emphasised the strategy-structure-performance or strategy-environmentperformance paradigm of industrial economics. This paper investigates a variety of concepts; technology transfer, outsourcing, capability and corporate performance from the stance of “source-position-performance” paradigm as advanced in Day and Wensley’s (1988) ground2
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breaking paper. The benefits of this approach are rooted in the opportunity to investigate these different conceptions from varied scopes founded on a distinctive concept; and contribute to knowledge on how diverse business practices impact corporate success. Additionally, from the pertinent literature, to the knowledge of the authors, no paper based on
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research conducted in the African context has explored the above variables from the standpoint of Day and Wensley’s proposition. Furthermore, the attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the perceptions and practices of foreign organisations as well as domestic businesses makes this research distinctive.
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Literature Review
A basic proposition for this paper is that both outsourcing and technology transfer create
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capability and enhance business performance. This section presents arguments proposed by several researchers and develops a model that theoretically highlights how technology transfer and outsourcing can create capability and impact on business performance. Decades ago, Kazanjian and Rao (1999) observed that, there have been limited contributions of how capabilities are actually created and much of the literature seemed to assume that capabilities already exist within the firm. A surge of theoretical and empirical research has addressed
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several aspects of capability development by researchers.
Conceptual Framework
This paper is premised on Day and Wensley’s (1988) source-position-performance framework of sustainable competitive advantage in which strategic collaboration or
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outsourcing between firms and technology transfer from external parties are the sources, a firm’s capability is the positional mediator and business performance is the desired outcome.
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This framework (see Figure 1) was adopted to determine whether or not outsourcing and technology transfer create capabilities for firms and also impact on business performance and if there is an interconnectedness between outsourcing, technology transfer and business performance. Though the world has changed so much since the late 1980s, Day and Wensley’s source-position-performance paradigm remains relevant in today’s business environment because to a large extent, the sustenance of a competitive advantage which is a key determinant of superior performance, is still dependent on the sources from which a firm is able to derive business and operational advantages. Additionally effective positioning is a key contributor to strategic and market advantages. Consequently, several leading companies
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across the globe and with national contexts tend to pay attention to sources from which they can gain an edge as well to their positioning or posture in the marketplace in their efforts to carve a niche for themselves in order to maintain continual superior performance relative to their competitors in their respective industries. This seemingly timeless nature of Day and
Outsourcing, Capability and Business Performance
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Wensely’s model was an influential factor in adopting their framework for our study.
Transnational and local firms face complex situations from their customers and must respond to the routine demands in an apt way. The tip of the iceberg principle emphasizes that about
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fifty percent of customers do not complain when there is a service failure or when a customer is not satisfied with a product after usage. Thus, to meet the rising needs of customers, certain
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components within the value delivery chain must be enhanced. To avoid ire reactions from customers and losing them to competition, companies must outsource weaker chains within the value delivery network to far more competent experts while focusing on strong chains. Deavers (1997) defines outsourcing as the flow of components and finished parts from the supplier to the outsourcing firm, which it could produce and market but has decided otherwise to devote its internal resources to maintaining its core competencies. Thus, focusing on other core competencies and outsourcing weaker components will save the
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outsourcing firm some resources (time, revenue and labour) which could be channelled into enhancing the stronger chains. Despite the perilous nature of outsourcing, it is proposed that: H1: Outsourcing creates enhanced capabilities for firms
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In today’s business world characterised by hyper-competition from industry leaders and potential new entrants, firms are obliged to look for innovative ways of generating value.
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Outsourcing is a management strategy by which a firm delegates major, non-core business functions to specialized and efficient service providers (Corbett, 1999). The old-fashioned outsourcing emphasis on pre-emptive remunerations like cost reduction have been surpassed by productivity, flexibility, speed, and access to new technologies and skills in emerging businesses (Greer, Youngblood and Gary, 1999). Thus, outsourcing non-core business processes enhances business performance as Yang et al (2007) and McIvor (2008) asserts that outsourcing has become an important business approach, and a competitive advantage may be gained as products or services are produced more effectively and efficiently by outside suppliers. Most global corporations believe that in order to compete, efficiency and cost control rather than strictly over-reliance on revenue increases (Conner and Prahalad, 1996) is 4
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a driver to industry success. Frayer, Scannell and Thomas (2000) have proposed that companies are increasingly viewing outsourcing strategies as a means of reducing costs, increasing quality, and enhancing a firms overall competitive position. Therefore, it is proposed that:
Technology transfer, Capability and Business Performance
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H2: Outsourcing significantly impacts on business performance.
Technology transfer is an ingredient for developing technological capabilities as it is now being recognised as having played an important part in the industrial development of most
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developing economies in this 21st Century. Mittleman and Pasha (1997) defined technology transfer from a broader perspective as the movement of knowledge, skill, organisation, values
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and capital from the point of generation to the site of adaptation and application. Mansfield (1975), classified technology transfer into vertical and horizontal; explaining that vertical relates to transfer of technology from basic research to applied research to development and then to production respectively while horizontal deals with the movement and use of technology used in one place, organisation, context to another place, organisation and context. The relevance of technology transfer on firm operations in the context of developing countries has been attested to: as resulting in improved knowledge, value added processes
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through technology adoption capability, and enhanced competitive advantage for business performance (Lin, 2003; Liao and Hu, 2007; Ivarsson and Alvstam, 2004). Further, it is envisaged by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation that appropriate technology transfer, under the right policy and business conditions, contributes to learning
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and development of capability, which in turn contribute to competitiveness in domestic and international markets. Thus, we suggest that:
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H3: Technology transfer creates capability for businesses.
Evidence from the early and late industrialisers shows that technology, as the commercial application of scientific knowledge, has been a major driver of industrial and economic development (Singh, Joseph and Johnson, 2015). Enterprises acting entrepreneurially (within the context of a network of competitors, suppliers and customers) have been the major players in developing technological capabilities and competitiveness. The sophisticated consumer complemented with the rapid change in technology requires firms to have some inimitable embedded structures and practices that will safeguard its offerings from the unpredictable macro and micro-environmental factors. Technology transfer in the short term 5
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offers a company, especially local firms, lower costs or better and improved products and develops capability which feeds into a sustainable competitive advantage armour in the longer term depending on the effectiveness of the application of the acquired technology. Thus, the role and impact and contribution of technology transfer cannot be short sighted;
H4: Technology transfer impacts heavily on business performance.
Capability and Business Performance
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therefore:
Firm capabilities consist of complex coordinated patterns of skills and knowledge that are
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uniquely embedded in processes that are performed well, relative to competitors (Bingham, Eisenhardt and Furr, 2007; Ethiraj, Kale, Krishman and Singh, 2005). An integrated set of
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capabilities rather than a single capability is imperative to corporate success. The microeconomic strategy that focuses on the resource-based view of firms argue that organisation’s performance depends on the firm’s ability to acquire, deploy and maintain a set of advantageous resources or assets (Wernerfelt, 1995; Amit and Schoemaker, 1993). Translating capabilities to meet customer needs and wants better than competitors can lead to global success, therefore it is hypothesised that:
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H5: Capabilities of firms impact on business performance.
… Insert Figure 1 here: The Conceptual Framework …
Methodology
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The leading firms in Ghana, drawn from the country’s Club 100 list published by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC, 2015) formed the target sample for the study. An
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annual compilation of 100 top performing companies, the Ghana Club 100 encompasses a wide range of operational sectors as well as wholly locally owned and multi-national firms, and was therefore deemed suitable for this cross-sectional study. In 1998 the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) launched the Ghana Club 100 initiative to give due recognition to enterprise building and corporate excellence in Ghana. The study purposively selected the Ghana Club 100 companies because they are typical and representative of the corporate firm – limited by liability across several operational sectors. This provided the basis to gather information to investigate how firms in Ghana create capability through outsourcing and technology transfer and the resultant effect on corporate performance.
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The cross-sectional survey approach was used to collect data with questionnaires administered in person by trained research assistants. Appointments were booked with CEOs of various firms, most of which are based in Greater Accra, to solicit their responses to our questions. The research assistants administered the questionnaires over the phone with the
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few CEOs whose organisations were outside Greater Accra after questionnaires had been mailed to them ahead of time to study before the phone interviews were conducted. Confidentiality and anonymity were guaranteed in order to elicit cooperation and information from all the companies. Respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which they performed activities in the concepts (modelled as reflective constructs) on a seven-point
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lickert scale - from strongly disagree to strongly agree – for outsourcing, technology transfer and capability. A five-point scale – from very poor to very good - was used for business
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performance. The measures were either adopted or adapted from the extant literature. Technology transfer was measured using the construct of Ivarsson and Alvstam (2004). Outsourcing was derived from Singh (2009) and measured by two items reflecting the degree of the proportion of outsourcing (ratio of production outsourcing to in-house production) and the degree of diversity of plant-mix (ratio of distinct products outsourced to total distinct products manufactured by a firm. Capability was derived from research conducted by
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Atuahene-Gima (2005) on product development capability.
Performance of firms was assessed by adopting a multi-dimensional approach. This included: financial measures relating to growth (sales growth, market share growth) and profitability (return on investment); adaptability and innovation success (rate of new product
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development); and, customer-focused measures, namely, customer satisfaction (Walker and Ruekert, 1987; Baker and Hart, 1989; Kotabe and Omura, 1989; Deng and Dart, 1994; Porter,
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2002; Reichheld, 2006).
Questionnaires were administered to all firms listed in the Ghana Club 100 rankings for 2014 published by the GIPC in 2015. A total of 83 usable questionnaires were received representing a response rate of 83%. All received responses were used in the analysis with missing values and outliers deemed to be within acceptable ranges. The respondents were CEOs of their organisations, and therefore deemed to be representative of the target sample and appropriate for the analysis. See Tables 1a and 1b for further sample characteristics.
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… Insert Table 1a here … … Insert Table 1b here …
Results and Analysis
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Data Analysis
The study tested both the measurement and structural models using Partial Least Squares (PLS) and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with SmartPLS (Ringle, Wende and Will, 2005). The PLS-SEM approach is the suitable technique as it seeks to maximise explained variance (Hair, Babin, Black and Anderson, 2009) consistent with the objective of this study
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to explain the development of capability through outsourcing and technology transfer and the
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resultant effects on business performance in firms in Ghana.
Measurement Validations
Composite Reliability, Convergent Validity and Discriminant Validity of the measures were assessed according to Chin (1998). As depicted in Table 2, Composite Reliability (CR) and Cronbach’s alpha of 0.70 for constructs indicate the set of indicator variables are internally consistent, thereby affirming reliability of measures consistent with Chin (1998) and Hair et
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al. (2009). The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) for each construct was above 0.50 (except for Performance) as recommended by Chin (1998) and high factor loadings of above 0.50 (Hair et al, 2009) confirm the convergent validity of the measures. Discriminant validity was assessed in two ways - the Square Root of the AVE calculated for each construct was found to be greater than all correlations between the construct and other constructs, and cross
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loadings of items were higher on own constructs than on other constructs, thus, showing that the constructs are unique and not simply a reflection of other variables (see Tables 3 and 4).
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Two items with loadings of less than 0.50 were dropped from the measurement model to attain acceptable reliability and validity: an item measuring business performance and another measuring technology transfer.
… Insert Tables 2, 3 and 4 here...
Structural Model Using the SPSS linear regression option as outlined in Hair, Hult, Ringle, and Sarstedt, (2013), outsourcing, technology transfer and capability as predictors of business performance
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were examined for collinearity. The results in Table 5 below show variance inflation factor (VIF) values of below 5.0 and tolerance well above 0.20 indicating non-collinearity between the predictor constructs outsourcing-capability and technology transfer-capability consistent
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with Hair et al. (2013).
Further, the bootstrap re-sampling method in SmartPLS was run (setting the number of samples to 5000 and mean replacement for missing data) to test the significance of the hypothesized paths in the overall research model according to Hair et al. (2013). Figure 2a depicts results of the overall model for the structural analysis with standardized path
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coefficients (β) and explanatory powers, R2.
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Consistent with H1, outsourcing is found to create capability for firms, although weakly but statistically significant (β = 0.266 at p<0.001 for two-tailed test). No support was found for H2, which hypothesized a significant impact of outsourcing on business performance. Rather, the direction of the relationship was negative yet statistically significant (β=-0.084, p<0.05 for one-tailed test). With a statistically significant relation, technology transfer creates capability for firms yielding a path coefficient of β=0.431 at p<0.001 (for two-tailed test) to support H3. Although the path coefficient for H4 is in the expected direction, it fails to attain
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statistical significance (β=0.017, n.s). Finally, as posited in H5, capability significantly impacts business performance (β=0.447 at p<0.001 for two-tailed test). Overall, the firms surveyed create capability more through technology transfer (β=0.431) than through outsourcing (β=0.266), and both sources explain over 28% of the variance for the
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development of capability in firms in Ghana. Similarly, capability explains 18.9% of the
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variance for business performance.
… Insert Table 5 here … … Insert Figure 2a here…
Post-hoc Analysis To further confirm the overall reliability and predictive relevance of the proposed model, the study analysed effects in both local and foreign firms. To proceed with the post-hoc analysis, the overall data set was divided into “foreign” and “local” groups, thus, corresponding to the 40 foreign firms and 43 local firms in the study. The hypothesized relationships in the main 9
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model were then tested for each of the groups. The results are depicted in Figure 2b below. Results from the post hoc analysis show further support for the original hypothesized path relationships in overall model. For instance, the relation between outsourcing and capability is further confirmed with greater path coefficients in foreign firms (β=0.435, p<0.001).
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Technology transfer is also confirmed to create capability with further support in local firms (β=0.543, p<0.001) than in foreign firms. The relationship between capability and performance yields β=0.467 and β=0.443 in both foreign and local firms respectively: a further support for the original structural model hypothesized paths.
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… Insert Figure 2b: Foreign/Local firms Model Results …
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It is important to note that the post hoc analysis reveals a positive relationship between outsourcing and business performance in local firms (β=0.109, p<0.05). Although weak, this provides further support for the original hypothesized model path relationship in H2. Similarly, a statistically significant relationship is found between technology transfer and performance in local firms (β=0.152, p<0.05), to lend support to the original proposition that
Discussion
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local firms, through technology transfer, heavily impact their business performance.
This study was built on a theoretical model which posits that firms achieve success directly
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from the implementation of strategies relating to outsourcing and technology transfer, and indirectly from the capability developed by outsourcing and technology transfer. Our empirical investigation of this model indicates varied results concerning the effects of
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outsourcing and technology transfer on both the capability and performance of foreign and domestic firms. Further investigation suggests the balancing influences that outsourcing and technology transfer have in building capability and improving corporate success. For managers to develop and maintain organisational capability, it is vital to understand the essence of attaining a match between outsourcing and technology transfer strategies.
Contribution to Theory This empirical study makes a significant contribution to the pertinent literature and sheds further light on a number of critical issues that business executives require to operate their
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businesses successfully. First, an attempt was made to connect two research areas, which are, outsourcing and technology transfer. Both constructs are considered sources of positional advantage. We also investigated their capacity to build capability to enhance business success. This conceptual framework draws from the “source-position-performance” model
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originally propounded by Day and Wensley (1988) and enabled a sound investigation of various components that are considered to provide firms with a positional advantage and improve business success.
In earlier research, the widest-ranging areas that have been examined comprise two fields
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(market orientation and outsourcing) in an Asian environment (Singh, 2009). This study augments the current literature by responding to the request for researchers to investigate the
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impact of outsourcing and other variables in building capability to improve business success in other cultural settings (Singh, 2009) in order to improve our confidence in the significance of its general applicability. This research augments attempts to deepen the understanding of researchers concerning the impact of outsourcing in developing capabilities to improve business success by including technology transfer to the variables to be investigated and conducting this research within the setting of a developing country. Our results suggest that foreign companies in Ghana appear to utilise both technology transfer and outsourcing
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strategies to develop their capability. Their local counterparts tend to rely more on technology transfer strategies compared with outsourcing to build capability. Both foreign and domestic companies appear to use technology transfer and capability to improve performance.
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Secondly, from a methodological perspective, this research applied theoretical models from a wide body of knowledge to examine the propositions advanced. In this setting, our concepts
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were developed to fit a developing country context. Interestingly, the efficacy of each notion is enriched due to an understanding of effective practices in outsourcing and technology transfer by companies doing business in Ghana and the capacity of executives to appreciate and offer constructive responses which resulted in the fine tuning of the research instruments. Though these dynamics establish the conceivable usefulness of each construct in the Ghanaian setting, their applicability may not be consistent amongst developing countries with different stages of advancement and economic profiles or amongst companies categorised by varying ownership profiles, industry sectors and sizes.
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Thirdly, the business success (or corporate performance) measure adopted in this research encompassed three areas; innovativeness, efficiency and effectiveness (Appiah-Adu, 2009). To achieve a complete picture of business success, performance of companies was based on a composite methodology. This comprised: financial measures associated with growth (sales
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growth, market share growth) and profitability (return on investment); adaptability and innovation success (rate of new product development); and, customer-related dimensions, specifically, customer satisfaction (Walker and Ruekert, 1987; Baker and Hart, 1989; Johne, 1992; Deng and Dart, 1994; Thomas, 1998; Porter, 2002; Reichheld, 2006).
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Finally, a significant contribution of this study is the domestic and foreign setting of the research. The similarities and differences amongst foreign and domestic companies’
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strategies to develop capability and enhance performance in a developing nation setting make an important augmentation to the relevant literature. As a result of the expansion of markets and growth of economies, concerning the adoption of outsourcing and technology transfer in developing capability to improve corporate success, foreign organisations may have to employ a variety of strategies in markets away from their home countries which may be distinctive from those utilised by domestic organisations. The results emanating from this research enable us to understand better the variables undergirding these aforementioned
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constructs. In today’s business environment typified by specialised knowledge and fierce competition, it is noteworthy that foreign and local companies place emphasis on varied positional advantage sources to compete effectively in their sectors, although capability is one strong positional advantage that both foreign and domestic organisations appear to
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employ in realising superior business success in the marketplace.
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Study Findings and Implications for Practitioners Based on foregoing analyses, a number of relationships amongst the different variables studied were identified for the firms studied. Moreover, specific relationships were detected depending on whether one was examining foreign firms or local firms.
For hypothesis one, it was proposed that outsourcing would result in enhanced capability. Overall, this relationship was found to be significant but weak. For foreign firms, there was a positive, moderate and significant impact of outsourcing on capability while for the local firms, the relationship was positive, weak and significant. The implication is that firms in Ghana place some value on outsourcing but it appears to be more relevant to foreign 12
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companies than it is to local businesses. Foreign firms may tend to use outsourcing much more than their local counterparts because of historical outsourcing practices they have been exposed to in their operations in the Western world over the years. It is therefore not surprising that foreign firms tend to engage more in this practice relative to their local
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counterparts. On the other hand, local firms may not be well exposed to outsourcing practices and therefore are not able to capitalise on the advantages that outsourcing gives an organisation in its efforts to build capability. This said, managers of local firms would do well to learn how best to adopt a strategic approach outsourcing (as opposed to a tactical method) to improve the success of their organisations as they compete in the same business
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environment with their foreign counterparts.
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Regarding hypothesis two, the argument was that outsourcing significantly impacts business performance. Overall the finding for all the firms studied was that relationship between outsourcing and business performance was significant, weak and negative. For foreign firms, outsourcing had a significant, moderate and negative association with performance while among local businesses, the link was significant and positive but weak. It is possible that foreign firms may over-outsource their functions or activities which will subsequently erode any possible gains, ultimately leading to high costs and not necessarily significantly revenues,
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thereby leading to erosion in profitability, and hence, lower business performance levels. A lesson for managers of foreign firms studied in this research is that their over-reliance on outsourcing as a source of positional advantage instead of using it to build capability which directly provides a positional advantage, appears to hurt their firms in the final analysis,
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thereby resulting in relatively lower performance levels. However, the findings pertaining to local firms indicate that if managers of domestic businesses adopt a measured approach to
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handling outsourcing and employ it as a source of building capability, it will ultimately lead to enhanced performance of their firms.
Hypothesis three advocated that technology transfer creates capability for businesses. From the findings of this empirical study, technology transfer is perceived by both foreign and local firms studied as providing capability for their businesses. Since technology is still evolving in the developing world, adopting technology transfer as a source of a positional advantage is seen as critical to building the capability of firms in such economies. Interestingly, local firms tend to lay higher emphasis on technological transfer as a source of building capability relative to their foreign counterparts. Since local firms generally lag behind their foreign 13
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competitors technologically, the findings of this study suggest that they have a greater urgency to adopt new technologies quickly to enable them to compete effectively in the marketplace, hence their stronger focus on technology transfer as a source of gaining a positional advantage. The finding that managers of foreign and domestic companies perceive
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technology transfer as a source of positional advantage is a sign that their firms and the business environment in which Ghana’s leading firms operate seem to be relatively well positioned to compete effectively in today’s global market which is highly driven by technology both at the firm and industry levels. This stance is not misplaced due to the strong role technology will continue to play at the high end of most industries and markets as we
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move further into the 21st century.
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In hypothesis four, it was posited that technology transfer impacts performance. From the findings, it appears that the companies studied do not gain a significant improvement in business performance from technology transfer because of acquisition costs, training costs, maintenance costs and the adoption and utilisation of the technology required for real technology transfer to be effected. However, if these issues are tackled, technology transfer is likely to benefit local firms, which from the results, are characterised by an attitude that embraces technology because of their current perceived technological deficits. Foreign firms
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being repositories of technology generally have the opportunity to turn technology transfer advantage into enhanced performance. However, for technology transfer to have a significant impact on performance, the role of the customer in making the technology transfer efficient and effective is critical. If the technology transfer is not managed holistically to include
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external customers and implementation is done speedily without due recognition of the technological readiness and savviness of customers, the desired results may prove elusive.
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Moreover, managers of the foreign and domestic firms studied in this research need to note that for real technology transfer to occur and to achieve the expected positive outcome, there is a need to move beyond ‘technology purchased and installed’ to ‘technology adoption, utilisation and learning’. Managers who desire the true and lasting benefits of technology transfer are therefore advised to aspire to the organisational learning outcome level of technology transfer.
Hypothesis five proffered that capability is positively related to business performance. The results of this study indicate that for both foreign and locals firms, capability is found to provide inherent advantages that result in superior business performance. From our 14
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conceptual underpinnings for this research, we suggested that an organisation’s capability may be developed through technology transfer or outsourcing. In this particular context, the finding of our study implies that regardless of the approach used by the firms studied to build capability, it is established a key determinant of business performance. This finding is not
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surprising and is consistent with the results obtained in a similar empirical research effort undertaken in an Asian context by Singh (2009). Thus, for managers of foreign and domestic companies operating in Ghana, it is important to note that the ability to introduce new products, access a wide range of product/service distribution network, create market
ultimately result in superior organisational performance.
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Limitations and Future Research Directions
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strategies for new offerings, and secure resources for marketing new offerings would
With respect to the technology transfer construct, this study did not explore the difference between technology purchased and installed on the one hand and on the other hand adoption, utilisation and learning, thereby making technology transfer an embedded part of the organisation (institutional knowledge and organisational learning). This distinction is important if we are to realise a deeper understanding of the efficiency of use of technology based on knowledge transfer. Future research needs to address this limitation in our study by
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attempting to utilise measures that capture the ability to determine the efficiency of technology transfer based on knowledge transfer. For this study, subjective data were used to measure performance. Future studies based on the variables investigated in this empirical research that employs a combination of both objective and subjective performance measures
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would provide a deeper understanding into how the variables examined influence organisational success. In this study, technology transfer and outsourcing, two constructs that
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have gained prominence in the knowledge economy of the 21st century, were the key sources of positional advantage that our efforts focused on. Future studies would do well to consider using other possible sources of positional advantage postulated in the extant literature.
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Table 1a: Characteristics of Respondent Firms
Firm Characteristics
31 21 31 83
Turnover Below 10 million Btn 10-100 million Above 100 million No response
37.35% 25.30% 37.35% 100.00%
Count Percent
40 43 83
87.95% 12.05% 100.00%
48.19% 51.81% 100.00%
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Ownership Foreign Firms Domestic Firms
73 10 83
Regional Location Greater Accra Other Regions
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Type of Business Services Manufacturing
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Table 1b: Characteristics of Respondent Firms Firm Characteristics
22 38 5 18 83
26.51% 45.78% 6.02% 21.69% 100.00%
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Employee Size Below 50 Btn 50-100 Above 100
Count Percent
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Count Percent
Count Percent 76 7 83
91.57% 8.43% 100.00%
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Table 2: Reliability and Validity Assessments Factor Loading (std.)
t Statistic
Ratio of production outsourcing to in-house production
0.92
33.19
Ratio of outsourced products to manufactured products Technology Transfer (α = 0.93, CR = 0.94, AVE = 0.54) Financial assistance to obtain raw materials Feedback to improve current product technology Technical consultations to master new product tech. R&D-collaboration in product-related areas Financial assistance to obtain machinery and equipment Tech. support to improve existing production technology Tech. consultations to master new production tech. Advice on production layout and organization Assistance with quality assurance system In-plant training program for managers and technicians Training programs for managers and technicians In-plant training program for workers Training program for workers – local or abroad Capability (α = 0.82, CR = 0.88, AVE = 0.65 ) Rapidly introduce new products to market Access to a wide distribution network for products Creative marketing strategies for new products Secure resources for marketing new products Business Performance (α = 0.70, CR = 0.79, AVE = 0.44) Sales growth Market share growth Return on investment New product development
0.81
11.10
0.51 0.61 0.60 0.65 0.69 0.84 0.87 0.84 0.63 0.88 0.86 0.83 0.82
7.48 11.49 12.53 15.67 14.63 29.16 37.88 28.83 9.72 51.65 53.15 35.55 39.56
0.77 0.65 0.90 0.88
23.91 14.04 108.65 55.49
0.73 0.65 0.70 0.68
11.99 7.77 13.03 11.50
Construct/Variables
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Outsourcing (α = 0.70, CR = 0.86, AVE = 0.76 )
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Table 3: Additional Correlations and Validations
Outsourcing Tech Transfer Capability Performance
1.0000 0.1364 0.3245 0.0398
Tech Transfer 1.0000 0.4642 0.2199
Capability
1.0000 0.4107
Performance
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Outsourcing
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Note: The diagonal shaded cells are the square roots of the AVE for each factor.
1.0000
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Table 4: Cross-Loadings for Measures
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0.3327 0.2139 0.0212 0.2113 0.3343 0.4614 0.2057 0.3565 0.4133 0.2809 0.1186 0.4194 0.4239 0.3903 0.4081 0.7680 0.6457 0.9045 0.8823 0.3147 0.1694 0.2641 0.3685
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e: Shaded cells indicate cross-loadings of items on own constructs.
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Performance 0.0234 0.0528 -0.0059 0.1021 0.1274 0.1622 0.0861 0.1823 0.1184 0.0355 0.1436 0.2291 0.2839 0.1848 0.2279 0.2378 0.1691 0.4392 0.4134 0.6984 0.6439 0.6833 0.6906
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Capability
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OUT_1 OUT_2 TECH_2 TECH_3 TECH_4 TECH_5 TECH_6 TECH_7 TECH_8 TECH_9 TECH_10 TECH_11 TECH_12 TECH_13 TECH_14 CAP_1 CAP_2 CAP_3 CAP_4 PERF_1 PERF_2 PERF_3 PERF_5
Outsourcing 0.9242 0.8134 0.2786 -0.0141 0.0761 0.2355 -0.1275 -0.1121 0.0078 0.1382 0.0992 0.2023 0.1595 0.2386 0.1504 0.3116 0.3388 0.2817 0.1588 0.1409 -0.0798 0.0474 0.0257
Tech Transfer 0.0452 0.2342 0.5132 0.6138 0.6044 0.6526 0.6930 0.8388 0.8652 0.8333 0.6325 0.8815 0.8641 0.8327 0.8182 0.2449 0.3219 0.4501 0.4388 0.1635 -0.0754 0.2195 0.1955
Not
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Table 5: Collinearity Test for predictor constructs for Performance
1
B (Constant) Outsourcing Tech transfer Capability
Std. Error
Beta
Collinearity Statistics T
Sig.
2.504E-6
.103
-.104
.108
-.104
-.958
.035
.116
.035
.306
.428
.121
.428
3.528
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a. Dependent Variable: Performance
.000
Tolerance
VIF
1.000 .341
.894
1.118
.760
.784
1.275
.001
.715
1.399
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Model
Standardized Coefficients
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Unstandardized Coefficients
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OUTSOURCING
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Technology Transfer, Outsourcing, Capability and Performance: A Comparison of Foreign and Local Firms in Ghana
H2
H1
BUSINESS
H3
CAPABILITY
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TECHNOLOGY
H5
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Figure 1: The Conceptual Framework
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TRANSFER
1
PERFORMANCE
H4
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OUTSOURCING
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Technology Transfer, Outsourcing, Capability and Performance: A Comparison of Foreign and Local Firms in Ghana
H2=-0.084***
H1=0.266*
BUSINESS
H3=0.431*
CAPABILITY
H5=0.447*
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TECHNOLOGY
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TRANSFER
PERFORMANCE
H4=0.017
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Figure 2a: Overall Structural Model Results Significance level *p=0.001 **p=0.01 ***p=0.05
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Technology Transfer, Outsourcing, Capability and Performance: A Comparison of Foreign and Local Firms in Ghana
H1=0.435*/0.235**
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OUTSOURCING H2=-0.352*/0.109***
BUSINESS
TECHNOLOGY
H3=0.285*/0.543*
CAPABILITY
PERFORMANCE
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TRANSFER
H5=0.467*/0.443*
H4=-0.056/0.152***
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Figure 2b: Post-hoc Analysis - Foreign/Local firms Model Results Significance level *p=0.001 **p=0.01 ***p=0. 05
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Highlights Owing to intense competition in today’s business environment, organisations that aspire to excel in their respective sectors need to develop the appropriate capabilities in order to gain and sustain a competitive edge. Outsourcing and technology transfer provide firms with the platform for
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developing capability to achieve superior performance in the marketplace. However, in the setting of a developing economy, the relative effects of outsourcing and technology transfer on corporate performance among foreign and local companies when investigated together in an amalgamated model is yet to be examined empirically. To obtain a deeper understanding, two
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pathways through which outsourcing and technology transfer enhance corporate performance of companies in Ghana are presented. Results of this research indicate differences in the extent to
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which outsourcing and technology transfer influence capability and subsequently affect corporate performance. Limitations of this study as well as implications of the findings for managers and
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researchers are ultimately highlighted.
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Prof. Kwaku Appiah-Adu (PhD) is a Professor of Strategy, Dean at Central University Business School and Principal Strategic Adviser of the Oxford Policy Management’s Oil and Gas Programme, Ghana. Previously, he worked at the Office of the President, Ghana, where he was Head of Government’s Policy Coordination, Monitoring and Evaluation, Chairman of the
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Oil and Gas Technical Committee, Director of Ghana’s Central Governance Project, member of the President’s Investors’ Advisory Council as well as the Advisory Board for the UN Initiative on Continental Shelf Delineation. Prior to that he was a consultant at PwC and lectured at the Universities of Cardiff and Portsmouth. Having authored several books and over 100
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publications, Kwaku has facilitated workshops and presented papers at numerous international forums in every continent. He has been elected to the ANBAR Hall of Excellence for
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Outstanding Contribution to the Literature and Body of Knowledge. His recent books are: “Governance of the Petroleum Sector in an Emerging Economy” (2013), Gower Publishers; and “Key Determinants of National Development” – co-edited with Mahamudu Bawumia (2015), Gower Publishers, UK. Kwaku has served on various boards in the public and private sectors, and is a recipient of many awards including the President’s Award for exceptional contribution to national development. Currently, he is Board Chairman of GLICO Pensions Trustee Company
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Ltd, Independent Director of Shell Ghana Pensions Fund, and member of the Advisory Board of Lupcon Centre for Business Research, Germany. Email - [email protected]; [email protected]
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Bernard Kofi Okpattah is an Information Systems & Technology practitioner with years of expertise and experience in both industry and academia. Bernard is currently a Lecturer
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(Computer Science) at Lancaster University Ghana (the Lancaster University England campus in Accra, Ghana) after years of professional service rising to the position of Acting Head of IT at Accra Polytechnic, Ghana. He obtained a Master’s degree in Information Technology with specialization in Information Systems and Strategy in 2013 from the Open University Malaysia Accra Institute of Technology, Ghana and BSc. Computer Engineering in 2006 from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). Bernard is a recipient of the prestigious Dr. Kwame A. Boakye Award for Best Master’s Research in Computing Science, and his research seeks to improve the role of Information Systems and related Technology in Organizations and Society with publications in peer-reviewed journals.
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Email - [email protected]; [email protected]
Justice G. Djokoto is a Senior Lecturer in Agribusiness Department, Central Business School, Central University, Accra. He holds a BSc degree in Agriculture with specialisation in
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Agricultural Economics and Master of Philosophy degree in Agricultural Administration both from the University of Ghana, Legon. Prior to enrolling for the Master’s programme, he obtained a Post graduate diploma in Education. Foreign direct investment and Agribusiness, technical and
firms are research areas that engage his attention.
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Email – [email protected]
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economic performance of organisations, and technology and record keeping of Agribusiness
S0160-791X(16)30083-5
DOI:
10.1016/j.techsoc.2016.07.002
Reference:
TIS 947
To appear in:
Technology in Society
Received Date: 30 May 2016 Accepted Date: 18 July 2016
Please cite this article as: Appiah-Adu K, Okpattah B, Djokoto J, Technology transfer, outsourcing, capability and performance: A comparison of foreign and local firms in Ghana, Technology in Society (2016), doi: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2016.07.002. This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
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*Kwaku Appiah-Adu Professor of Strategy Dean of Central Business School Central University Accra, Ghana [email protected] [email protected]
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Technology Transfer, Outsourcing, Capability and Performance: A Comparison of Foreign and Local Firms in Ghana
(* Corresponding Author)
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Bernard Okpattah Lecturer Computer Science Department Lancaster University Ghana Accra, Ghana
Justice Djokoto Senior Lecturer Central Business School Central University Accra, Ghana
Submitted to: Technology in Society May, 2016
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Technology Transfer, Outsourcing, Capability and Performance: A Comparison of Foreign and Local Firms in Ghana
Abstract
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Owing to intense competition in today’s business environment, organisations that aspire to excel in their respective sectors need to develop the appropriate capabilities in order to gain and sustain a competitive edge. Outsourcing and technology transfer provide firms with the platform for developing capability to achieve superior performance in the marketplace.
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However, in the setting of a developing economy, the relative effects of outsourcing and technology transfer on corporate performance among foreign and local companies when investigated together in an amalgamated model is yet to be examined empirically. To obtain a
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deeper understanding, two pathways through which outsourcing and technology transfer enhance corporate performance of companies in Ghana are presented. Results of this research indicate differences in the extent to which outsourcing and technology transfer influence capability and subsequently affect corporate performance. Limitations of this study as well as implications of the findings for managers and researchers are ultimately highlighted.
Introduction
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Keywords: Outsourcing; Technology transfer; Capability; Corporate performance; Ghana
Heightening competition, liberalisation of world economies and globalisation have captured
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the attention of entrepreneurs and business executives to develop sustainable strategies upon which distinctive competencies can be built. Thus, in today’s marketplace, business success
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or mere survival hinges on an organisation’s ability to improve everything it does. Companies primarily have a fiduciary responsibility but while executing that task, consistently improving and deploying innovative strategies to reduce the lead time and cycle is a prerequisite.
Internal environmental scanning to identify a firm’s strengths and weaknesses as well as the inevitable threats and opportunities available will serve as a wake-up call to firms since business entities must engage in cost saving activities while minimizing risks and maximising returns for shareholders and survival. Outsourcing among several other strategies are tools that both multinational corporations and indigenous firms can deploy because arguments in favour of outsourcing highlights its primary cost-saving capability. 1
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Presently, one of the most noticeable global economic trends is outsourcing of activities previously carried on in-house and by definition, outsourcing refers to the purchasing from an external supplier of a function previously carried out within the company (Oshri and
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Kotlarsky and Willcocks, 2015, Bernhardt, Batt, Houseman, and Appelbaum, 2015). Firm’s decision to contract out production include labour cost savings, scale economies, technology, the lack of domestic skilled labour and the availability of qualified middle management in the host country (Abraham and Taylor, 1996; Grossman and Helpman, 2002; Girma and G¨org, 2004; Tomiura, 2004; Diaz-Mora, 2005; Bartel, Lach, and Sicherman, 2005; Antras,
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Garicano, and Rossi-Hansberg, 2006). Multinational Corporations (MNCs), therefore, can focus and zero in on activities that can be carried out better than competitors augmented with
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some amount of outsourcing to achieve the desirable outcome; that is, business performance.
Among the wealth of options available to companies in building know-how and improving business performance is technology transfer, a term typically applied to the external procurement of technology from one player to another within or across national boundaries (Battistella, De Toni and Pillon, 2015; Zhenhua and Yao, 2015). The movement of technology may involve physical assets, know how, and technical knowledge (Bozeman,
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2000). Lundquist (2003) used the term technology transfer and the movement of a set of capabilities simultaneously, thus the usage of technology transfer after acquisition creates capability. Technology transfer assumes a dual role of building capabilities and improving business performance because it has an element of inimitable embedded knowledge that is
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only exclusive and distinctive to the transferee only.
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In order for long term businesses sustainability, it is not enough for firms to develop and master a single capability but to meet the ever-changing customer needs and implement a viable business model, corporations must integrate a whole system of organizational capabilities.
Study Justification Earlier research has emphasised the strategy-structure-performance or strategy-environmentperformance paradigm of industrial economics. This paper investigates a variety of concepts; technology transfer, outsourcing, capability and corporate performance from the stance of “source-position-performance” paradigm as advanced in Day and Wensley’s (1988) ground2
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breaking paper. The benefits of this approach are rooted in the opportunity to investigate these different conceptions from varied scopes founded on a distinctive concept; and contribute to knowledge on how diverse business practices impact corporate success. Additionally, from the pertinent literature, to the knowledge of the authors, no paper based on
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research conducted in the African context has explored the above variables from the standpoint of Day and Wensley’s proposition. Furthermore, the attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the perceptions and practices of foreign organisations as well as domestic businesses makes this research distinctive.
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Literature Review
A basic proposition for this paper is that both outsourcing and technology transfer create
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capability and enhance business performance. This section presents arguments proposed by several researchers and develops a model that theoretically highlights how technology transfer and outsourcing can create capability and impact on business performance. Decades ago, Kazanjian and Rao (1999) observed that, there have been limited contributions of how capabilities are actually created and much of the literature seemed to assume that capabilities already exist within the firm. A surge of theoretical and empirical research has addressed
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several aspects of capability development by researchers.
Conceptual Framework
This paper is premised on Day and Wensley’s (1988) source-position-performance framework of sustainable competitive advantage in which strategic collaboration or
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outsourcing between firms and technology transfer from external parties are the sources, a firm’s capability is the positional mediator and business performance is the desired outcome.
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This framework (see Figure 1) was adopted to determine whether or not outsourcing and technology transfer create capabilities for firms and also impact on business performance and if there is an interconnectedness between outsourcing, technology transfer and business performance. Though the world has changed so much since the late 1980s, Day and Wensley’s source-position-performance paradigm remains relevant in today’s business environment because to a large extent, the sustenance of a competitive advantage which is a key determinant of superior performance, is still dependent on the sources from which a firm is able to derive business and operational advantages. Additionally effective positioning is a key contributor to strategic and market advantages. Consequently, several leading companies
3
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across the globe and with national contexts tend to pay attention to sources from which they can gain an edge as well to their positioning or posture in the marketplace in their efforts to carve a niche for themselves in order to maintain continual superior performance relative to their competitors in their respective industries. This seemingly timeless nature of Day and
Outsourcing, Capability and Business Performance
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Wensely’s model was an influential factor in adopting their framework for our study.
Transnational and local firms face complex situations from their customers and must respond to the routine demands in an apt way. The tip of the iceberg principle emphasizes that about
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fifty percent of customers do not complain when there is a service failure or when a customer is not satisfied with a product after usage. Thus, to meet the rising needs of customers, certain
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components within the value delivery chain must be enhanced. To avoid ire reactions from customers and losing them to competition, companies must outsource weaker chains within the value delivery network to far more competent experts while focusing on strong chains. Deavers (1997) defines outsourcing as the flow of components and finished parts from the supplier to the outsourcing firm, which it could produce and market but has decided otherwise to devote its internal resources to maintaining its core competencies. Thus, focusing on other core competencies and outsourcing weaker components will save the
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outsourcing firm some resources (time, revenue and labour) which could be channelled into enhancing the stronger chains. Despite the perilous nature of outsourcing, it is proposed that: H1: Outsourcing creates enhanced capabilities for firms
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In today’s business world characterised by hyper-competition from industry leaders and potential new entrants, firms are obliged to look for innovative ways of generating value.
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Outsourcing is a management strategy by which a firm delegates major, non-core business functions to specialized and efficient service providers (Corbett, 1999). The old-fashioned outsourcing emphasis on pre-emptive remunerations like cost reduction have been surpassed by productivity, flexibility, speed, and access to new technologies and skills in emerging businesses (Greer, Youngblood and Gary, 1999). Thus, outsourcing non-core business processes enhances business performance as Yang et al (2007) and McIvor (2008) asserts that outsourcing has become an important business approach, and a competitive advantage may be gained as products or services are produced more effectively and efficiently by outside suppliers. Most global corporations believe that in order to compete, efficiency and cost control rather than strictly over-reliance on revenue increases (Conner and Prahalad, 1996) is 4
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a driver to industry success. Frayer, Scannell and Thomas (2000) have proposed that companies are increasingly viewing outsourcing strategies as a means of reducing costs, increasing quality, and enhancing a firms overall competitive position. Therefore, it is proposed that:
Technology transfer, Capability and Business Performance
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H2: Outsourcing significantly impacts on business performance.
Technology transfer is an ingredient for developing technological capabilities as it is now being recognised as having played an important part in the industrial development of most
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developing economies in this 21st Century. Mittleman and Pasha (1997) defined technology transfer from a broader perspective as the movement of knowledge, skill, organisation, values
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and capital from the point of generation to the site of adaptation and application. Mansfield (1975), classified technology transfer into vertical and horizontal; explaining that vertical relates to transfer of technology from basic research to applied research to development and then to production respectively while horizontal deals with the movement and use of technology used in one place, organisation, context to another place, organisation and context. The relevance of technology transfer on firm operations in the context of developing countries has been attested to: as resulting in improved knowledge, value added processes
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through technology adoption capability, and enhanced competitive advantage for business performance (Lin, 2003; Liao and Hu, 2007; Ivarsson and Alvstam, 2004). Further, it is envisaged by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation that appropriate technology transfer, under the right policy and business conditions, contributes to learning
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and development of capability, which in turn contribute to competitiveness in domestic and international markets. Thus, we suggest that:
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H3: Technology transfer creates capability for businesses.
Evidence from the early and late industrialisers shows that technology, as the commercial application of scientific knowledge, has been a major driver of industrial and economic development (Singh, Joseph and Johnson, 2015). Enterprises acting entrepreneurially (within the context of a network of competitors, suppliers and customers) have been the major players in developing technological capabilities and competitiveness. The sophisticated consumer complemented with the rapid change in technology requires firms to have some inimitable embedded structures and practices that will safeguard its offerings from the unpredictable macro and micro-environmental factors. Technology transfer in the short term 5
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offers a company, especially local firms, lower costs or better and improved products and develops capability which feeds into a sustainable competitive advantage armour in the longer term depending on the effectiveness of the application of the acquired technology. Thus, the role and impact and contribution of technology transfer cannot be short sighted;
H4: Technology transfer impacts heavily on business performance.
Capability and Business Performance
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therefore:
Firm capabilities consist of complex coordinated patterns of skills and knowledge that are
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uniquely embedded in processes that are performed well, relative to competitors (Bingham, Eisenhardt and Furr, 2007; Ethiraj, Kale, Krishman and Singh, 2005). An integrated set of
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capabilities rather than a single capability is imperative to corporate success. The microeconomic strategy that focuses on the resource-based view of firms argue that organisation’s performance depends on the firm’s ability to acquire, deploy and maintain a set of advantageous resources or assets (Wernerfelt, 1995; Amit and Schoemaker, 1993). Translating capabilities to meet customer needs and wants better than competitors can lead to global success, therefore it is hypothesised that:
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H5: Capabilities of firms impact on business performance.
… Insert Figure 1 here: The Conceptual Framework …
Methodology
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The leading firms in Ghana, drawn from the country’s Club 100 list published by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC, 2015) formed the target sample for the study. An
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annual compilation of 100 top performing companies, the Ghana Club 100 encompasses a wide range of operational sectors as well as wholly locally owned and multi-national firms, and was therefore deemed suitable for this cross-sectional study. In 1998 the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) launched the Ghana Club 100 initiative to give due recognition to enterprise building and corporate excellence in Ghana. The study purposively selected the Ghana Club 100 companies because they are typical and representative of the corporate firm – limited by liability across several operational sectors. This provided the basis to gather information to investigate how firms in Ghana create capability through outsourcing and technology transfer and the resultant effect on corporate performance.
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The cross-sectional survey approach was used to collect data with questionnaires administered in person by trained research assistants. Appointments were booked with CEOs of various firms, most of which are based in Greater Accra, to solicit their responses to our questions. The research assistants administered the questionnaires over the phone with the
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few CEOs whose organisations were outside Greater Accra after questionnaires had been mailed to them ahead of time to study before the phone interviews were conducted. Confidentiality and anonymity were guaranteed in order to elicit cooperation and information from all the companies. Respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which they performed activities in the concepts (modelled as reflective constructs) on a seven-point
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lickert scale - from strongly disagree to strongly agree – for outsourcing, technology transfer and capability. A five-point scale – from very poor to very good - was used for business
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performance. The measures were either adopted or adapted from the extant literature. Technology transfer was measured using the construct of Ivarsson and Alvstam (2004). Outsourcing was derived from Singh (2009) and measured by two items reflecting the degree of the proportion of outsourcing (ratio of production outsourcing to in-house production) and the degree of diversity of plant-mix (ratio of distinct products outsourced to total distinct products manufactured by a firm. Capability was derived from research conducted by
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Atuahene-Gima (2005) on product development capability.
Performance of firms was assessed by adopting a multi-dimensional approach. This included: financial measures relating to growth (sales growth, market share growth) and profitability (return on investment); adaptability and innovation success (rate of new product
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development); and, customer-focused measures, namely, customer satisfaction (Walker and Ruekert, 1987; Baker and Hart, 1989; Kotabe and Omura, 1989; Deng and Dart, 1994; Porter,
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2002; Reichheld, 2006).
Questionnaires were administered to all firms listed in the Ghana Club 100 rankings for 2014 published by the GIPC in 2015. A total of 83 usable questionnaires were received representing a response rate of 83%. All received responses were used in the analysis with missing values and outliers deemed to be within acceptable ranges. The respondents were CEOs of their organisations, and therefore deemed to be representative of the target sample and appropriate for the analysis. See Tables 1a and 1b for further sample characteristics.
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… Insert Table 1a here … … Insert Table 1b here …
Results and Analysis
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Data Analysis
The study tested both the measurement and structural models using Partial Least Squares (PLS) and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with SmartPLS (Ringle, Wende and Will, 2005). The PLS-SEM approach is the suitable technique as it seeks to maximise explained variance (Hair, Babin, Black and Anderson, 2009) consistent with the objective of this study
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to explain the development of capability through outsourcing and technology transfer and the
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resultant effects on business performance in firms in Ghana.
Measurement Validations
Composite Reliability, Convergent Validity and Discriminant Validity of the measures were assessed according to Chin (1998). As depicted in Table 2, Composite Reliability (CR) and Cronbach’s alpha of 0.70 for constructs indicate the set of indicator variables are internally consistent, thereby affirming reliability of measures consistent with Chin (1998) and Hair et
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al. (2009). The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) for each construct was above 0.50 (except for Performance) as recommended by Chin (1998) and high factor loadings of above 0.50 (Hair et al, 2009) confirm the convergent validity of the measures. Discriminant validity was assessed in two ways - the Square Root of the AVE calculated for each construct was found to be greater than all correlations between the construct and other constructs, and cross
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loadings of items were higher on own constructs than on other constructs, thus, showing that the constructs are unique and not simply a reflection of other variables (see Tables 3 and 4).
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Two items with loadings of less than 0.50 were dropped from the measurement model to attain acceptable reliability and validity: an item measuring business performance and another measuring technology transfer.
… Insert Tables 2, 3 and 4 here...
Structural Model Using the SPSS linear regression option as outlined in Hair, Hult, Ringle, and Sarstedt, (2013), outsourcing, technology transfer and capability as predictors of business performance
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were examined for collinearity. The results in Table 5 below show variance inflation factor (VIF) values of below 5.0 and tolerance well above 0.20 indicating non-collinearity between the predictor constructs outsourcing-capability and technology transfer-capability consistent
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with Hair et al. (2013).
Further, the bootstrap re-sampling method in SmartPLS was run (setting the number of samples to 5000 and mean replacement for missing data) to test the significance of the hypothesized paths in the overall research model according to Hair et al. (2013). Figure 2a depicts results of the overall model for the structural analysis with standardized path
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coefficients (β) and explanatory powers, R2.
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Consistent with H1, outsourcing is found to create capability for firms, although weakly but statistically significant (β = 0.266 at p<0.001 for two-tailed test). No support was found for H2, which hypothesized a significant impact of outsourcing on business performance. Rather, the direction of the relationship was negative yet statistically significant (β=-0.084, p<0.05 for one-tailed test). With a statistically significant relation, technology transfer creates capability for firms yielding a path coefficient of β=0.431 at p<0.001 (for two-tailed test) to support H3. Although the path coefficient for H4 is in the expected direction, it fails to attain
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statistical significance (β=0.017, n.s). Finally, as posited in H5, capability significantly impacts business performance (β=0.447 at p<0.001 for two-tailed test). Overall, the firms surveyed create capability more through technology transfer (β=0.431) than through outsourcing (β=0.266), and both sources explain over 28% of the variance for the
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development of capability in firms in Ghana. Similarly, capability explains 18.9% of the
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variance for business performance.
… Insert Table 5 here … … Insert Figure 2a here…
Post-hoc Analysis To further confirm the overall reliability and predictive relevance of the proposed model, the study analysed effects in both local and foreign firms. To proceed with the post-hoc analysis, the overall data set was divided into “foreign” and “local” groups, thus, corresponding to the 40 foreign firms and 43 local firms in the study. The hypothesized relationships in the main 9
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model were then tested for each of the groups. The results are depicted in Figure 2b below. Results from the post hoc analysis show further support for the original hypothesized path relationships in overall model. For instance, the relation between outsourcing and capability is further confirmed with greater path coefficients in foreign firms (β=0.435, p<0.001).
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Technology transfer is also confirmed to create capability with further support in local firms (β=0.543, p<0.001) than in foreign firms. The relationship between capability and performance yields β=0.467 and β=0.443 in both foreign and local firms respectively: a further support for the original structural model hypothesized paths.
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… Insert Figure 2b: Foreign/Local firms Model Results …
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It is important to note that the post hoc analysis reveals a positive relationship between outsourcing and business performance in local firms (β=0.109, p<0.05). Although weak, this provides further support for the original hypothesized model path relationship in H2. Similarly, a statistically significant relationship is found between technology transfer and performance in local firms (β=0.152, p<0.05), to lend support to the original proposition that
Discussion
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local firms, through technology transfer, heavily impact their business performance.
This study was built on a theoretical model which posits that firms achieve success directly
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from the implementation of strategies relating to outsourcing and technology transfer, and indirectly from the capability developed by outsourcing and technology transfer. Our empirical investigation of this model indicates varied results concerning the effects of
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outsourcing and technology transfer on both the capability and performance of foreign and domestic firms. Further investigation suggests the balancing influences that outsourcing and technology transfer have in building capability and improving corporate success. For managers to develop and maintain organisational capability, it is vital to understand the essence of attaining a match between outsourcing and technology transfer strategies.
Contribution to Theory This empirical study makes a significant contribution to the pertinent literature and sheds further light on a number of critical issues that business executives require to operate their
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businesses successfully. First, an attempt was made to connect two research areas, which are, outsourcing and technology transfer. Both constructs are considered sources of positional advantage. We also investigated their capacity to build capability to enhance business success. This conceptual framework draws from the “source-position-performance” model
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originally propounded by Day and Wensley (1988) and enabled a sound investigation of various components that are considered to provide firms with a positional advantage and improve business success.
In earlier research, the widest-ranging areas that have been examined comprise two fields
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(market orientation and outsourcing) in an Asian environment (Singh, 2009). This study augments the current literature by responding to the request for researchers to investigate the
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impact of outsourcing and other variables in building capability to improve business success in other cultural settings (Singh, 2009) in order to improve our confidence in the significance of its general applicability. This research augments attempts to deepen the understanding of researchers concerning the impact of outsourcing in developing capabilities to improve business success by including technology transfer to the variables to be investigated and conducting this research within the setting of a developing country. Our results suggest that foreign companies in Ghana appear to utilise both technology transfer and outsourcing
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strategies to develop their capability. Their local counterparts tend to rely more on technology transfer strategies compared with outsourcing to build capability. Both foreign and domestic companies appear to use technology transfer and capability to improve performance.
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Secondly, from a methodological perspective, this research applied theoretical models from a wide body of knowledge to examine the propositions advanced. In this setting, our concepts
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were developed to fit a developing country context. Interestingly, the efficacy of each notion is enriched due to an understanding of effective practices in outsourcing and technology transfer by companies doing business in Ghana and the capacity of executives to appreciate and offer constructive responses which resulted in the fine tuning of the research instruments. Though these dynamics establish the conceivable usefulness of each construct in the Ghanaian setting, their applicability may not be consistent amongst developing countries with different stages of advancement and economic profiles or amongst companies categorised by varying ownership profiles, industry sectors and sizes.
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Thirdly, the business success (or corporate performance) measure adopted in this research encompassed three areas; innovativeness, efficiency and effectiveness (Appiah-Adu, 2009). To achieve a complete picture of business success, performance of companies was based on a composite methodology. This comprised: financial measures associated with growth (sales
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growth, market share growth) and profitability (return on investment); adaptability and innovation success (rate of new product development); and, customer-related dimensions, specifically, customer satisfaction (Walker and Ruekert, 1987; Baker and Hart, 1989; Johne, 1992; Deng and Dart, 1994; Thomas, 1998; Porter, 2002; Reichheld, 2006).
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Finally, a significant contribution of this study is the domestic and foreign setting of the research. The similarities and differences amongst foreign and domestic companies’
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strategies to develop capability and enhance performance in a developing nation setting make an important augmentation to the relevant literature. As a result of the expansion of markets and growth of economies, concerning the adoption of outsourcing and technology transfer in developing capability to improve corporate success, foreign organisations may have to employ a variety of strategies in markets away from their home countries which may be distinctive from those utilised by domestic organisations. The results emanating from this research enable us to understand better the variables undergirding these aforementioned
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constructs. In today’s business environment typified by specialised knowledge and fierce competition, it is noteworthy that foreign and local companies place emphasis on varied positional advantage sources to compete effectively in their sectors, although capability is one strong positional advantage that both foreign and domestic organisations appear to
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employ in realising superior business success in the marketplace.
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Study Findings and Implications for Practitioners Based on foregoing analyses, a number of relationships amongst the different variables studied were identified for the firms studied. Moreover, specific relationships were detected depending on whether one was examining foreign firms or local firms.
For hypothesis one, it was proposed that outsourcing would result in enhanced capability. Overall, this relationship was found to be significant but weak. For foreign firms, there was a positive, moderate and significant impact of outsourcing on capability while for the local firms, the relationship was positive, weak and significant. The implication is that firms in Ghana place some value on outsourcing but it appears to be more relevant to foreign 12
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companies than it is to local businesses. Foreign firms may tend to use outsourcing much more than their local counterparts because of historical outsourcing practices they have been exposed to in their operations in the Western world over the years. It is therefore not surprising that foreign firms tend to engage more in this practice relative to their local
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counterparts. On the other hand, local firms may not be well exposed to outsourcing practices and therefore are not able to capitalise on the advantages that outsourcing gives an organisation in its efforts to build capability. This said, managers of local firms would do well to learn how best to adopt a strategic approach outsourcing (as opposed to a tactical method) to improve the success of their organisations as they compete in the same business
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environment with their foreign counterparts.
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Regarding hypothesis two, the argument was that outsourcing significantly impacts business performance. Overall the finding for all the firms studied was that relationship between outsourcing and business performance was significant, weak and negative. For foreign firms, outsourcing had a significant, moderate and negative association with performance while among local businesses, the link was significant and positive but weak. It is possible that foreign firms may over-outsource their functions or activities which will subsequently erode any possible gains, ultimately leading to high costs and not necessarily significantly revenues,
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thereby leading to erosion in profitability, and hence, lower business performance levels. A lesson for managers of foreign firms studied in this research is that their over-reliance on outsourcing as a source of positional advantage instead of using it to build capability which directly provides a positional advantage, appears to hurt their firms in the final analysis,
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thereby resulting in relatively lower performance levels. However, the findings pertaining to local firms indicate that if managers of domestic businesses adopt a measured approach to
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handling outsourcing and employ it as a source of building capability, it will ultimately lead to enhanced performance of their firms.
Hypothesis three advocated that technology transfer creates capability for businesses. From the findings of this empirical study, technology transfer is perceived by both foreign and local firms studied as providing capability for their businesses. Since technology is still evolving in the developing world, adopting technology transfer as a source of a positional advantage is seen as critical to building the capability of firms in such economies. Interestingly, local firms tend to lay higher emphasis on technological transfer as a source of building capability relative to their foreign counterparts. Since local firms generally lag behind their foreign 13
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competitors technologically, the findings of this study suggest that they have a greater urgency to adopt new technologies quickly to enable them to compete effectively in the marketplace, hence their stronger focus on technology transfer as a source of gaining a positional advantage. The finding that managers of foreign and domestic companies perceive
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technology transfer as a source of positional advantage is a sign that their firms and the business environment in which Ghana’s leading firms operate seem to be relatively well positioned to compete effectively in today’s global market which is highly driven by technology both at the firm and industry levels. This stance is not misplaced due to the strong role technology will continue to play at the high end of most industries and markets as we
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move further into the 21st century.
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In hypothesis four, it was posited that technology transfer impacts performance. From the findings, it appears that the companies studied do not gain a significant improvement in business performance from technology transfer because of acquisition costs, training costs, maintenance costs and the adoption and utilisation of the technology required for real technology transfer to be effected. However, if these issues are tackled, technology transfer is likely to benefit local firms, which from the results, are characterised by an attitude that embraces technology because of their current perceived technological deficits. Foreign firms
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being repositories of technology generally have the opportunity to turn technology transfer advantage into enhanced performance. However, for technology transfer to have a significant impact on performance, the role of the customer in making the technology transfer efficient and effective is critical. If the technology transfer is not managed holistically to include
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external customers and implementation is done speedily without due recognition of the technological readiness and savviness of customers, the desired results may prove elusive.
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Moreover, managers of the foreign and domestic firms studied in this research need to note that for real technology transfer to occur and to achieve the expected positive outcome, there is a need to move beyond ‘technology purchased and installed’ to ‘technology adoption, utilisation and learning’. Managers who desire the true and lasting benefits of technology transfer are therefore advised to aspire to the organisational learning outcome level of technology transfer.
Hypothesis five proffered that capability is positively related to business performance. The results of this study indicate that for both foreign and locals firms, capability is found to provide inherent advantages that result in superior business performance. From our 14
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conceptual underpinnings for this research, we suggested that an organisation’s capability may be developed through technology transfer or outsourcing. In this particular context, the finding of our study implies that regardless of the approach used by the firms studied to build capability, it is established a key determinant of business performance. This finding is not
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surprising and is consistent with the results obtained in a similar empirical research effort undertaken in an Asian context by Singh (2009). Thus, for managers of foreign and domestic companies operating in Ghana, it is important to note that the ability to introduce new products, access a wide range of product/service distribution network, create market
ultimately result in superior organisational performance.
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Limitations and Future Research Directions
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strategies for new offerings, and secure resources for marketing new offerings would
With respect to the technology transfer construct, this study did not explore the difference between technology purchased and installed on the one hand and on the other hand adoption, utilisation and learning, thereby making technology transfer an embedded part of the organisation (institutional knowledge and organisational learning). This distinction is important if we are to realise a deeper understanding of the efficiency of use of technology based on knowledge transfer. Future research needs to address this limitation in our study by
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attempting to utilise measures that capture the ability to determine the efficiency of technology transfer based on knowledge transfer. For this study, subjective data were used to measure performance. Future studies based on the variables investigated in this empirical research that employs a combination of both objective and subjective performance measures
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would provide a deeper understanding into how the variables examined influence organisational success. In this study, technology transfer and outsourcing, two constructs that
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have gained prominence in the knowledge economy of the 21st century, were the key sources of positional advantage that our efforts focused on. Future studies would do well to consider using other possible sources of positional advantage postulated in the extant literature.
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Table 1a: Characteristics of Respondent Firms
Firm Characteristics
31 21 31 83
Turnover Below 10 million Btn 10-100 million Above 100 million No response
37.35% 25.30% 37.35% 100.00%
Count Percent
40 43 83
87.95% 12.05% 100.00%
48.19% 51.81% 100.00%
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Ownership Foreign Firms Domestic Firms
73 10 83
Regional Location Greater Accra Other Regions
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Type of Business Services Manufacturing
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Table 1b: Characteristics of Respondent Firms Firm Characteristics
22 38 5 18 83
26.51% 45.78% 6.02% 21.69% 100.00%
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Employee Size Below 50 Btn 50-100 Above 100
Count Percent
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Count Percent
Count Percent 76 7 83
91.57% 8.43% 100.00%
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Table 2: Reliability and Validity Assessments Factor Loading (std.)
t Statistic
Ratio of production outsourcing to in-house production
0.92
33.19
Ratio of outsourced products to manufactured products Technology Transfer (α = 0.93, CR = 0.94, AVE = 0.54) Financial assistance to obtain raw materials Feedback to improve current product technology Technical consultations to master new product tech. R&D-collaboration in product-related areas Financial assistance to obtain machinery and equipment Tech. support to improve existing production technology Tech. consultations to master new production tech. Advice on production layout and organization Assistance with quality assurance system In-plant training program for managers and technicians Training programs for managers and technicians In-plant training program for workers Training program for workers – local or abroad Capability (α = 0.82, CR = 0.88, AVE = 0.65 ) Rapidly introduce new products to market Access to a wide distribution network for products Creative marketing strategies for new products Secure resources for marketing new products Business Performance (α = 0.70, CR = 0.79, AVE = 0.44) Sales growth Market share growth Return on investment New product development
0.81
11.10
0.51 0.61 0.60 0.65 0.69 0.84 0.87 0.84 0.63 0.88 0.86 0.83 0.82
7.48 11.49 12.53 15.67 14.63 29.16 37.88 28.83 9.72 51.65 53.15 35.55 39.56
0.77 0.65 0.90 0.88
23.91 14.04 108.65 55.49
0.73 0.65 0.70 0.68
11.99 7.77 13.03 11.50
Construct/Variables
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EP
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M AN U
SC
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Outsourcing (α = 0.70, CR = 0.86, AVE = 0.76 )
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Table 3: Additional Correlations and Validations
Outsourcing Tech Transfer Capability Performance
1.0000 0.1364 0.3245 0.0398
Tech Transfer 1.0000 0.4642 0.2199
Capability
1.0000 0.4107
Performance
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Outsourcing
AC C
EP
TE D
M AN U
SC
Note: The diagonal shaded cells are the square roots of the AVE for each factor.
1.0000
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Table 4: Cross-Loadings for Measures
SC
0.3327 0.2139 0.0212 0.2113 0.3343 0.4614 0.2057 0.3565 0.4133 0.2809 0.1186 0.4194 0.4239 0.3903 0.4081 0.7680 0.6457 0.9045 0.8823 0.3147 0.1694 0.2641 0.3685
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e: Shaded cells indicate cross-loadings of items on own constructs.
AC C
Performance 0.0234 0.0528 -0.0059 0.1021 0.1274 0.1622 0.0861 0.1823 0.1184 0.0355 0.1436 0.2291 0.2839 0.1848 0.2279 0.2378 0.1691 0.4392 0.4134 0.6984 0.6439 0.6833 0.6906
RI PT
Capability
M AN U
TE D
OUT_1 OUT_2 TECH_2 TECH_3 TECH_4 TECH_5 TECH_6 TECH_7 TECH_8 TECH_9 TECH_10 TECH_11 TECH_12 TECH_13 TECH_14 CAP_1 CAP_2 CAP_3 CAP_4 PERF_1 PERF_2 PERF_3 PERF_5
Outsourcing 0.9242 0.8134 0.2786 -0.0141 0.0761 0.2355 -0.1275 -0.1121 0.0078 0.1382 0.0992 0.2023 0.1595 0.2386 0.1504 0.3116 0.3388 0.2817 0.1588 0.1409 -0.0798 0.0474 0.0257
Tech Transfer 0.0452 0.2342 0.5132 0.6138 0.6044 0.6526 0.6930 0.8388 0.8652 0.8333 0.6325 0.8815 0.8641 0.8327 0.8182 0.2449 0.3219 0.4501 0.4388 0.1635 -0.0754 0.2195 0.1955
Not
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Table 5: Collinearity Test for predictor constructs for Performance
1
B (Constant) Outsourcing Tech transfer Capability
Std. Error
Beta
Collinearity Statistics T
Sig.
2.504E-6
.103
-.104
.108
-.104
-.958
.035
.116
.035
.306
.428
.121
.428
3.528
AC C
EP
TE D
M AN U
a. Dependent Variable: Performance
.000
Tolerance
VIF
1.000 .341
.894
1.118
.760
.784
1.275
.001
.715
1.399
SC
Model
Standardized Coefficients
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Unstandardized Coefficients
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OUTSOURCING
RI PT
Technology Transfer, Outsourcing, Capability and Performance: A Comparison of Foreign and Local Firms in Ghana
H2
H1
BUSINESS
H3
CAPABILITY
SC
TECHNOLOGY
H5
AC C
EP
TE D
Figure 1: The Conceptual Framework
M AN U
TRANSFER
1
PERFORMANCE
H4
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OUTSOURCING
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Technology Transfer, Outsourcing, Capability and Performance: A Comparison of Foreign and Local Firms in Ghana
H2=-0.084***
H1=0.266*
BUSINESS
H3=0.431*
CAPABILITY
H5=0.447*
SC
TECHNOLOGY
M AN U
TRANSFER
PERFORMANCE
H4=0.017
AC C
EP
TE D
Figure 2a: Overall Structural Model Results Significance level *p=0.001 **p=0.01 ***p=0.05
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Technology Transfer, Outsourcing, Capability and Performance: A Comparison of Foreign and Local Firms in Ghana
H1=0.435*/0.235**
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OUTSOURCING H2=-0.352*/0.109***
BUSINESS
TECHNOLOGY
H3=0.285*/0.543*
CAPABILITY
PERFORMANCE
M AN U
SC
TRANSFER
H5=0.467*/0.443*
H4=-0.056/0.152***
AC C
EP
TE D
Figure 2b: Post-hoc Analysis - Foreign/Local firms Model Results Significance level *p=0.001 **p=0.01 ***p=0. 05
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Highlights Owing to intense competition in today’s business environment, organisations that aspire to excel in their respective sectors need to develop the appropriate capabilities in order to gain and sustain a competitive edge. Outsourcing and technology transfer provide firms with the platform for
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developing capability to achieve superior performance in the marketplace. However, in the setting of a developing economy, the relative effects of outsourcing and technology transfer on corporate performance among foreign and local companies when investigated together in an amalgamated model is yet to be examined empirically. To obtain a deeper understanding, two
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pathways through which outsourcing and technology transfer enhance corporate performance of companies in Ghana are presented. Results of this research indicate differences in the extent to
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which outsourcing and technology transfer influence capability and subsequently affect corporate performance. Limitations of this study as well as implications of the findings for managers and
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researchers are ultimately highlighted.
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Prof. Kwaku Appiah-Adu (PhD) is a Professor of Strategy, Dean at Central University Business School and Principal Strategic Adviser of the Oxford Policy Management’s Oil and Gas Programme, Ghana. Previously, he worked at the Office of the President, Ghana, where he was Head of Government’s Policy Coordination, Monitoring and Evaluation, Chairman of the
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Oil and Gas Technical Committee, Director of Ghana’s Central Governance Project, member of the President’s Investors’ Advisory Council as well as the Advisory Board for the UN Initiative on Continental Shelf Delineation. Prior to that he was a consultant at PwC and lectured at the Universities of Cardiff and Portsmouth. Having authored several books and over 100
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publications, Kwaku has facilitated workshops and presented papers at numerous international forums in every continent. He has been elected to the ANBAR Hall of Excellence for
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Outstanding Contribution to the Literature and Body of Knowledge. His recent books are: “Governance of the Petroleum Sector in an Emerging Economy” (2013), Gower Publishers; and “Key Determinants of National Development” – co-edited with Mahamudu Bawumia (2015), Gower Publishers, UK. Kwaku has served on various boards in the public and private sectors, and is a recipient of many awards including the President’s Award for exceptional contribution to national development. Currently, he is Board Chairman of GLICO Pensions Trustee Company
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Ltd, Independent Director of Shell Ghana Pensions Fund, and member of the Advisory Board of Lupcon Centre for Business Research, Germany. Email - [email protected]; [email protected]
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Bernard Kofi Okpattah is an Information Systems & Technology practitioner with years of expertise and experience in both industry and academia. Bernard is currently a Lecturer
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(Computer Science) at Lancaster University Ghana (the Lancaster University England campus in Accra, Ghana) after years of professional service rising to the position of Acting Head of IT at Accra Polytechnic, Ghana. He obtained a Master’s degree in Information Technology with specialization in Information Systems and Strategy in 2013 from the Open University Malaysia Accra Institute of Technology, Ghana and BSc. Computer Engineering in 2006 from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). Bernard is a recipient of the prestigious Dr. Kwame A. Boakye Award for Best Master’s Research in Computing Science, and his research seeks to improve the role of Information Systems and related Technology in Organizations and Society with publications in peer-reviewed journals.
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Email - [email protected]; [email protected]
Justice G. Djokoto is a Senior Lecturer in Agribusiness Department, Central Business School, Central University, Accra. He holds a BSc degree in Agriculture with specialisation in
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Agricultural Economics and Master of Philosophy degree in Agricultural Administration both from the University of Ghana, Legon. Prior to enrolling for the Master’s programme, he obtained a Post graduate diploma in Education. Foreign direct investment and Agribusiness, technical and
firms are research areas that engage his attention.
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EP
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Email – [email protected]
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economic performance of organisations, and technology and record keeping of Agribusiness