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K Tire is a South Korean company, established in September 1960 when the countrys domestic automotive industry was still in its primitive stage. The same applied to other auto motive parts such as the tire industry. The operations of the company then were affected by facilities shortages and backward technology. This implied that on average, it produced 20 tires in a day. Other significant challenges included the difficulties experienced in procuring raw materials and the oil shock experienced in 1974. However, despite these challenges, the company still managed to record remarkable growth and achievements (Han & Park, 2017). By the year 1976, K Tire had emerged as a key player in the countrys tire industry, earning it a listing in the Korea Stock Exchange.
A year later, K Tire added the Songjung plant II to its list of achievements. In 1979, it received the Korea Quality Control Awards grand prize, a move that enhanced its corporate image. Despite the 1980s feverish democratization and political instability turmoil that ruined the countrys business environment, K Tire managed to come out strong with a total output of 50 million tires. It was also during this period that its Koksung plants broke ground. In its efforts to expand its research capability, K Tire founded technical research centers in the United Kingdom and the United States to establish a global network for research and development (Krawczyk-Dembicka, 2017). In addition, the company focused more on enhancing its global brand image.
To achieve this, a lot of emphasis was placed on building world class capabilities for research and development and production systems. Its global expansion strategies were maintained into the 2000s through continuous research and development efforts aimed at securing the production of quality tires for such brands as Volkswagen and Mercedes Benz models. The company adapted the Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology in 2013 to aid in manufacturing tires for passenger vehicles (Radnejad & Vredenburg, 2019). This saw it build an innovation model that make use of ICTs. As a result, it carved a competitive edge from its rivals in the tire industry, which majorly depend on bar codes.
Theoretical (Conceptual) Interpretation of the Case
Although RFID is not often ranked among the high-end technology approaches, when combined with tire manufacturing for vehicles, it is indeed cutting edge. As companies move from one phase to the other, they rely on different technological approaches to revamp their capabilities, survive in a competitive industry, and seamlessly stimulate growth. The theory behind this drive is pegged on entrepreneurship and its role in business growth and utilization of new technologies. Indeed, entrepreneurship is the engine that spurs economic growth through utilization of new technologies. It serves to discipline firms as they struggle to survive the windstorm of creative destruction. Incidentally, creative destruction generates disruptions that can only be exploited by individuals or organizations that are keen enough to spot them.
For a company to make profits, grow, and perhaps survive, it is significant that it adopts the theory of corporate entrepreneurship, which is essentially the processes that a firm uses to renew itself. This is the introduction of new knowledge and new products into the firm. Considering the companys operations, it can be theorized that its corporate entrepreneurship is mainly anchored on three factors. The first factor is the commitment of the firm to innovation (Mirimoghadam & Ghazinoory, 2017). This includes the introduction and creation of new products, commitment to patenting, and focus on investments on research and development. The second factor involves the venturing activities of the firm. This include entering new business fields through the creation of new businesses as well as sponsoring new ventures. Indeed, K Tire has expanded its business operations from South Korea to the rest of the world, including Europe and the US. The last factor is the firms efforts for strategic renewal, which are aimed at revitalizing its ability to compete. The adoption of the RFID technology by the K Tire has been a step towards this direction.
How the Theory Can Explain the K Tire Case
Just like any other organization, K Tire has its intangible rules and norms. These are its institutional pillars that help in guiding and constraining the behavior of its employees and other stakeholders. To fully engage its workforce, it is important for an organization to allow them come up with innovative strategies that can help the organization move forward. This way, K Tire would have succeeded in influencing the behavior of its employees into adopting and owning the new technology. As a result, such technologies will not experience much resistance from them.
The three institutional pillars that organizations use to influence behavior include regulative, normative, and cognitive. Regulative involves using formal sanction and coercion to force employees to adopt the new technology while normative entails inducing employees action through ethics and acceptability norms. On its part, the cognitive pillar involves the induction of employees actions through frames and categories that are known and can be interpreted by the workers themselves. For wide acceptance and easy adoption of the RFID technology by the K Tire workers, the normative and cognitive institutional pillars served well. Thus, it can be concluded that the primary reason why the firm registered a success in the adoption of its technology was because the employees were approached through the normative and cognitive institutional pillars.
References
Han, J., & Park, C.-m. (2017). Case study on adoption of new technology for innovation: Perspective of institutional and corporate entrepreneurship. Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 11(2).
Krawczyk-Dembicka, E. (2017). Analysis of technology management using the example of the production enterprise from the SME Sector. Procedia Engineering, 182, 359-365. Web.
Mirimoghadam, M., & Ghazinoory, S. (2017). An institutional analysis of technological learning in Irans oil and gas industry: Case study of south Pars gas field development. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 122, 262-274. Web.
Radnejad, A. B., & Vredenburg, H. (2019). Disruptive technological process innovation in a process-oriented industry: A case study. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 53, 63-79. Web.
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