The impact of the information and communications technology revolution on the internationalisation of corporate technology

✍ Scribed by Grazia D. Santangelo

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 135 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0969-5931
• DOI: 10.1016/s0969-5931(01)00039-7

✦ Synopsis

The rising pace of technological change in information and communications technology (ICT) has doubtless provoked the rise of "techno-globalism" at a cross-firm level by providing a new mode of diversification. As a result of the increasing process of technological interrelatedness, the specialisation in a core pervasive technology (as ICT is nowadays) allows the firm to develop tacit capabilities, which, in turn, facilitate its corporate activity in different kinds of technology across national boundaries in an intra-firm network. Therefore ICT can be view as a platform for entry into new products as well as an enabler of fusion of technology.

This paper investigates whether the increased specialisation in ICT has influenced the geographical diversification or internationalisation of firms. The association between the two phenomena is found in the later (but not in the former) period under analysis. By adopting a more detailed level of sectoral aggregation within the ICT field, the econometric analysis seems to indicate computing (rather than communications) as the ICT component driving the relationship between internationalisation of research and development activity and ICT specialisation.