مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

Historically, it has often taken product recalls, tragedies and monumental losses to bring to the fore the existence of obsolete technologies within companies and industries (Gidadhubli, 2000; Gupta and Wilemon, 1990; Luo, 2008; Shein, 2011; The Economist, 2014; see also Hora et al., 2011). In a world of increasing global integration and competition, technological breakthroughs and innovations have destroyed the competences of many firms as well as accelerated the demise of old technologies in both industrialised and industrialising nations (Adner, 2002; Afuah, 2009; Amankwah-Amoah, 2015a, 2016c; Fawcett and Waller, 2014; Pourakbar et al., 2012a, 2012b; Schilling, 2013).

Reflecting on these varying realities, some scholars have emphasised that the adoption of modern technology can help to minimise errors and defects, reduce costs, improve efficiency and innovativeness, and above all deliver sustainable competitive advantage (Afuah, 2009; Powell and Dent-Micallef, 1997). Buoyed by technological advancements, many firms have sought to improve their competitiveness by eliminating obsolete technologies, routines and processes (Bartels et al., 2012). In spite of this, some companies persist with using obsolete technologies (see also Cooper, 2004). Such persistence may stem from high switching cost, but our understanding of the wider issue remains underexplored (see Bartels et al., 2012).

Recent streams of scholarly works have emphasised that the obsolescence problem is “going to get worse, not better” during the 21st century (Bradley and Guerrero, 2009; Pourakbar et al., 2012b; Sandborn, 2007a). Indeed, around 3% of the global pool of electronic components becomes obsolete every month (Sandborn, 2007b). In spite of the growing body of research on obsolescence and the potential benefits of discarding obsolete technologies (Feng et al., 2007), there remains limited understanding of the dynamics of technology obsolescence and why some firms persist with an obsolete technology (see Bartels et al., 2012; Sandborn, 2007b).