Review of Methods and Tools Applied in Technology Assessment Literature

Technology assessment is an emerging field of management study for the past four decades. An increasing number of researches have been carried out over the years that contributes to the development of TA literature. There have been some journal articles summarizing the history and growth of the field during its evolution. However there has been no effort made to present an overview of the methodologies and tools that have been used in the TA research literature. This paper is the first attempt to fill that need. A thorough review of the TA articles published in leading journals in the MOT field is conducted to identify the methodologies or research tools in the studies. The paper starts with a brief overview of the development of the TA field over its history. This section provides the readers with knowledge of the movements in the field. A classification of the approaches, methods and tools that are available for TA studies is then introduced. The main content of the paper presents the works done in TA literature that involve certain research methodologies. A separate section is devoted to the status of TA relating developing countries follows, which highlights the interest of the author of his future research direction. It is hoped that the review will reveal opportunities for his research in devising a new TA model that is dedicated to the developing world. In general the paper´s main objective is to provide an overview of available TA methodologies that can be applied or further developed by other researchers.