(A) study on the national R\&D programs and the technology strategy of firms

Abstract

Strategic behaviour has been defined as managing environmental risks and matching organizational capabilities with the opportunities offered by the environment. Confronting discontinuous technological changes and globalization, the national capabilities for technology development are to determine their competence. National competence can be built by two-fold mechanism, private and public sector. Korean government has lunched several R&D programs since 1982. Recently, the effectiveness and coordination of these programs are frequently issued. And firms are trying to introduce the concept of strategic management of technology. The purposes of this thesis are: 1. to review critically the current government R & D programs in Korea to provide an analytic framework for evaluating and coordinating them in a strategic manner, 2. to provide the framework to analyze the technology strategy of firms in participating the government R & D programs to give policy-makers the insight for activating the cooperative R & D between the government and private sectors, 3. to identify technology strategic groups of firms and to examine their differences in the perceived environment, organizational characteristics, and their performance implication in general context of firms.

Major contributions of this thesis can be summarized as follows: First, the strategic positions of existing government R & D programs in Korea can be a norm that measures the effectiveness of them and coordinates them in nation-wide long-term perspective. Second, the conceptualized technology strategy of a firm participating the government R & D programs can give a policy maker the insight to manage the programs strategically and to induce firms into them. Third, the framework explained in chapter 5 for the environment-technology strategy-performance model givens firms a tool to make a proper technology strategy given the environment and its organizational capabilities.