The Thin Line Between Advanced and Conventional New Technology: A Case Study on Paper Industry Management

The case study evidence in this paper suggests that management of technological change is more complicated than the existing literature has acknowledged. Rather than merely introduce or not introduce new technology, managers have to choose between more or less advanced technologies whose implications are difficult to assess. Moreover, the choice between advanced and conventional production technologies seems to be influenced more by situational determinants than by the habitual actions of managers or changes in management characters. Taking these situational determinants and firm‐specific critical incidents seriously is essential, especially for an understanding of why managerial actors alter their approach to managing technological change. By adopting a longitudinal firm‐in‐sector perspective to technological change this paper demonstrates how coinciding increases in material resources and competitive pressures encourage management to adopt advanced instead of conventional technology. To justify this argument, the paper compares two consecutive technological change projects in the same firm and describes the background of their profoundly different degrees of sophistication.