A technology replacement model with variable market potential — An empirical study of CRT and LCD TV

The rapidly changing economic environment and increasingly fierce competition indicate that companies must innovate in both their products and marketing strategies if they are to continue to flourish. Specifically, the ability to accurately predict the demand for products is crucial when firms decide to allocate their resources, especially in the fast moving high technology industries, where there is very high investment in R&D and production facilities. This study establishes a forecast model for technology replacement based on the diffusion model with population growth used for the variable market potential. The proposed model is then applied to investigate the CRT and LCD TV market.The results suggest that the new model is more accurate than the constant market potential model in fitting and forecasting performance. Consumers who purchase a TV for the first time are likely more attracted to LCD TV rather than CRT TV. As for those individuals who already own a CRT TV, the attraction is not strong enough to encourage them to replace their current CRT TV with a new LCD TV. Moreover, it is noted that the falling price of LCD TV is an essential factor in encouraging purchases.     

Government Programs and Diffusion of Innovations in Taiwan: An Empirical Study of Household Technology Adoption Rates

ABSTRACT

This research mirrors Olshavsky's (1980) groundbreaking study by using penetration data for household technologies in Taiwan. Results support conventional wisdom that adoption rates are increasing over time. Moreover, rates were negatively associated with price. This research goes beyond Olshavsky by examining whether adoption rates differ across geographical regions types (i.e., rural, townships, and metropolitan). Adoption rates for nine household technologies at the three geographical types are not significantly different. Support is lent to the proposition that government rural development policies promoting education and physical infrastructures have fostered relatively equal diffusion patterns of household technologies in Taiwan.     

A comparison of diffusion approximations and actual limits in birth and death processes of noisy evolution

The stationary distribution of a birth and death process may not be approximated by a diffusion. The general situation is illustrated on the “musical chairs” model by Binmore et al. (1995). This model is shown to generate outcomes which are not captured by the concept of the ultralong run equilibrium selection introduced in Binmore et al. (1995).     

INNOVATION,SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN PUBLIC MANAGEMENT RESEARCH: Some methodological reflections

The critics of best practice research argue that it is based on selective reporting, does not ask whether innovations are sustainable and does not compare excellent organizations to those that are failing. This article attempts to defend best practice research from these criticisms as well as provide suggestions for future best practice research. The best applications to innovations awards are shown to be representative samples of innovative activity and sustainable. A number of examples of practitioner studies of best practice and academic or auditor studies of organizational failure are provided. The article concludes with suggestions as to how to integrate studies of success and failure, such as case studies of turnarounds and more quantitative studies intended to explain differences in performance among organizations (for example, league tables). The conclusion reached is that the criticisms of best practice research have become less relevant as best practice research has become methodologically more sophisticated.     

The impact of adoption timing on new service usage and early disadoption

Post-adoption usage can be a crucial element in obtaining substantial revenues from new service introduction, especially when adopters display low usage levels or decide to disadopt the service altogether. Here, the authors specifically examine the effects of adoption timing on post-adoption usage and disadoption. Using a longitudinal, individual-level usage data set of 6296 adopters of a new telecom service, they show that the earliest adopters have lower initial usage levels than do later adopters. However, early adopters show increasing usage after adoption, whereas late adopters tend to decrease their usage over time. Also, disadoption rates are higher among later adopters.     

A comparative study of the adoption and implementation of target costing in the UK, Australia and New Zealand

Most of the studies on target costing (TC) only provide insight into the adoption and perceived benefits of TC, and do not address the levels of implementation of the technique. These studies also assume that TC is only relevant to manufacturing firms and therefore do not investigate the adoption of this technique in service firms, and consequently exclude service firms from their surveys and analysis. Furthermore, most studies do not examine factors influencing the adoption of TC systems. Contributing to these gaps in the literature, this paper reports the results of a survey among CIMA-qualified management accountants working in manufacturing and service firms in the UK, Australia and New Zealand on the adoption and implementation of TC. The study examines the importance of attributes of TC (namely relative advantage, compatibility, ease of use, result demonstrability, trialability) for decision makers to adopt and implement such cost and management accounting innovation. The survey indicates that TC is equally prevalent among manufacturing and service firms while in terms of the levels of implementation there is a significant difference between manufacturing and service firms. The study shows that there is a growing interest in the examination of all cost-reducing strategies at the planning stage and adoption of value engineering to incorporate customer requirements rather than focusing on the adoption of cost-cutting strategies at the production stage.     

Organizational innovation: The challenge of measuring non-technical innovation in large-scale surveys

Although the implementation of innovative organizational concepts is considered to be highly important for a company's competitiveness, so far there has been little research on possible approaches to measure and monitor organizational innovations in large-scale surveys. Based on an item-oriented typology of organizational innovations which serves as the precondition for a common understanding, we describe and compare how organizational innovations have been measured through existing surveys in Europe. Using a large-scale survey comprising data of 1450 German manufacturing companies, we show how these different approaches lead to significantly different results regarding the organizational innovativeness of companies within one and the same sample. We derive four implications for the future measurement and monitoring of organizational innovations. Our findings contribute to the further development of an adequate methodology for an organizational innovation monitoring system.