| Abstract [eng] |
The technological discontinuities are challenges that incumbent firms in industries must overcome to sustain their position in the market. These discontinuities, which take place in form of technology cycles, happen at a faster pace in the high-tech industries increasing the uncertainty in the incumbent firms. In such fast-paced environments, the companies are required to have the ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure both the internal and external competences to address these rapidly changing environments if they want to keep their competitive advantage. When doing this, the Dynamic Capabilities (DCs), enable the firms to sense and seize new opportunities and transform or reconfigure. Moreover, in the context of the Hidden Champions (HCs) that are positioned in high-tech industries, despite being in these fast-paced environments, they are also positioned in narrow niche markets, which makes them even more sensitive toward external changes. In this sense, a research gap has been found in the studies performed on the topic of HCs, which despite their low brand awareness have a big impact on the national economies. The research aim is to validate a conceptual framework of the role of the DCs in addressing technological discontinuities in HCs positioned in high-tech industries. The research objectives are the following: 1. To get familiar with the concept of HCs and technological discontinuities in high-tech industry environments. 2. To perform a theoretical analysis to decompose the concepts of DCs, organizational rigidities, and technological discontinuities, and understand how they interrelate with each other. 3. To develop a conceptual framework for the DCs to address technological discontinuities in the specific context of high-tech industry positioned HCs, based on the previous bibliographic research. 4. To develop empirical qualitative research based on HCs positioned in high-tech industries to understand the role of DCs when addressing technological discontinuities in such fast-paced environments. 5. To provide a complemented and empirically validated conceptual framework for the role of DCs when addressing technological discontinuities in this specific context. The research method includes the bibliographic research and analysis to build a first theoretical framework for the role of the DCs in addressing technological discontinuities in HCs positioned in high-tech industries. For the validation of this framework, a qualitative case study has been conducted in HCs positioned in high-tech industries in Lithuania, where semi-structured interviews have been conducted, and the information complemented with secondary data. For the validation and completion of the framework, qualitative content analysis has been performed by making use of MAXQDA 2022. The key findings include a deeper knowledge of HCs and the key elements and interrelations between the concepts of technological discontinuities, organizational rigidities, and DCs. This enabled building a first theoretical framework for the role of the DCs when addressing technological discontinuities in this specific context. After the qualitative research, more insights have been gained regarding the interrelations of the concepts, and the previous theoretical framework has been completed and validated with the case studies. The importance of the DCs in addressing technological discontinuities has been confirmed in the context, where the main practices have also been identified. Nevertheless, despite both models’ general fitting, there are discrepancies between the framework built based on theoretical research and the empirically validated model. Thus, apart from the key role of the DCs in these changing environments, the importance of including external sources and the value of the human resources has been recognized. Furthermore, the organizational rigidities have been characterized not as obstacles but as reinforcements to stay in the old technologies. Besides that, two different patterns of reaction have been identified depending on the proximity of the technological change to the expertise of the HCs. |
