Explaining national differences in the adoption and design of collaborative technologies for operations management

This paper compares adoption and design of collaborative computer-aided technologies for operations management within manufacturing firms in Sweden and the UK and examines the influence of technology suppliers and professional associations (PAs) in shaping these processes. Members of PAs in each country were surveyed and interviews were conducted with key stakeholders. These revealed differences in diffusion with earlier adoption of standardized packages in the UK and a stronger reliance on customized systems in Sweden. Tightly codified best practice solutions have been pushed more strongly both by technology suppliers and also via PA networks in the UK than in Sweden. This may have generated problems for UK firms because notions of best practice under-emphasize the context-sensitivity of the technology and the need for organizational redesign. A preliminary framework will be presented to explain these differences.