A Managerial Model to Assess the Industrial Readiness for Successful Technology Transfer

Today, automotive industry plays a significant role in the economic development of countries around the world. But the results of numerous studies have revealed that despite the substantial efforts made to employ efficient models for successful technology transfer, the effective implementation of such models in developing countries including Iran has faced many challenges due to the inadequacy of related infrastructure particularly managerial performance. Therefore, it is of great importance for the managers in the field of automotive industry in particular and the other industries in general to carefully assess the present state and to develop a managerial model to evaluate the readiness of the industry for successful transfer of necessary technologies that will ultimately facilitate the growth of this industry in the competitive markers. For this purpose, the necessary indices for the evaluation of readiness of Iranian automotive industry for the effective technology transfer and the therapeutic strategies to reach the ideal state were identified and formed into a questionnaire that was administered to experts inside and outside Iran. Data obtained from the questionnaire were codified and entered into Concept System for concept mapping and into LISREL for path analysis. Then, the criteria that are believed to be important in the evaluation of the readiness of the automotive industry for a successful technology transfer were identified along with their significant coefficients and total values. And finally, based on the determining categories, criteria, and indices, a model was developed to evaluate the capabilities of the automotive industry for the successful technology transfer. The results of the causal analysis revealed that the model enjoyed a high index of goodness-of-fit ((X2) = 0.0128, PMSR = 0.00) at the 0.05 level of significance.