The Nature of Technology and Technological Change

The Nature of Technology and Technological Change

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The Nature of Technology and Technological Change

Introduction

The growth and development of any organization in any industry is highly determined by the company’s ability to be and remain competitive in its industry. The company’s competitiveness is on the other hand influenced by the company’s ability to change swiftly with the change of technology. Thus to remain competitive a company needs to have the ability to reconfigure, build, and integrate external and internal competences to handle the drastically changing environments. This paper review dynamic capabilities of King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre (KFSH&RC) and how they have contributed to the organization competitiveness. KFSH&RC is a quaternary or tertiary referral and care hospital located in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. It contains 1589 beds and acts as a national center of referral for genetic, cardiac surgery, organ transplantations, and oncology diseases among others. KFSH&RC was established in 1970 and in 1975, it was officially opened to offer its services to Saudi Arabian citizens. Since its establishment KFSH&RC has demonstrated great level of advancement which includes adaptation of the modern technology to enhance its competitive advantage.

Dynamics Capabilities in the KFSH&RC

Dynamic capabilities refer to the ability to attain new kinds of competitive advantage. Dynamic is a term that refers to ability to renew competences in order to attain congruence with the varying business environment (Teece et al., 1997). One of the KFSH&RC dynamic capabilities is the ability to swiftly adopt new technology and to integrate it effectively in it management and operation system to enhance efficiency and to improve quality of the services given in the organization. The technology adoption and full implementation is considerable expensive and thus it is hard to be duplicated due to the cost involved. The organization has recently adopted IT technology in most of its operational units. The organization has automated most of its operational units including the recent automation in Anesthesia Workstation in all its 37 theatres (Omnicell.com, 2014). This made it the first hospital in the area to fully automate its supply management and operating room medication. This enhanced the hospital’s ability to provide its services especially in complicated surgery where it’s a matter of life and death. This automation has reduced cases of theater complication since surgeons are highly assisted by the digital technology and thus reducing the level of cuts and mistakes. This has highly increased the organization’s competitive advantage in the region as more patients would prefer their services due to high survival chances. The automation has also reduced the operation time and thus, making the hospital increase its rate of operations per day. Thus, it can currently serve more people than before and with high level of efficiency. This has made it to be highly used for referral across the region. The organization also employs the automated supply management system which permits for consumption tracking and cost accounting of medical supply at the level of the patient. This ease the management process in the organization and increases efficiency in the supply and costing operations. It also enhances customer services and thus making it more competitive in offering effective customer services. The system also minimizes on loss and wastage since ordering and supply is only made when need be and in the needed quantity. This makes it possible to maximize on the profit, and to eliminate on cases of fraud or procurement problems (Teece et al., 1997).

The organization offers exceptional services using all its available valuable resources. These resources include extensive facilities that include infrastructure, machines and devices, as well as well trained and experienced medical professionals from different areas of operations. It also has a research center that assist in advancing knowledge in the institution through discovery of more improved medical operation procedures and evidence-based processes. This is a rear resource that is hard to imitate or duplicate, due to the uniqueness of the equipment, knowledge, and skills required in its establishment (Barney, 1995). The research center offers training and education to medical professionals of different specializations enhance the organization leadership and management. This enables the institution to offer the best tertiary, secondary, and primary health care services in the region. Its extensive resources and effective utilization of these resources increase the organization competitive advantage, making it one of the best medical institutions in the entire Middle East and a national center of referral particularly for terminal diseases in Saudi Arabia. The research center assists the organization in developing exceptional medical procedures which increases its competitiveness. It also increases its ability to effectively handle critical medical issues without hesitation and with minimal errors (Kfshrc.edu.sa. (2016).).

Use of Dynamic Capabilities to Retain Competitive Advantage

The identified dynamic capabilities can help the organization in maintaining its competitive advantage by ensuring that the capabilities always fit to the changing market environment in the industry. For instance, the organization should always ensure that it has the best resources to maintain quality and advance medical services in all its operational units. To manage this, it should ensure that it has the ability to advance its medical equipment as need arises or as the technology changes to always have the best facilities in the region. Continuous adoption of new technologies and effective integration of these technologies in the organization system at all times will play a great part in cost cutting and enhancing efficiency. It should also employ measures to motivate its professionals to keep on advancing their knowledge and skills in their respective field though personal efforts and organizational based programs to ensure that they are able to employ modern technologies to handle respective medical cases. The organization’s research center should ensure that it is always based on research that can play a great role in improving medical procedures that are believed to have some deficiencies or to be ineffective and in solving serious medical questions. This should be done with the aim of reducing the operation cost, reducing the operation time, increasing efficiency, reducing error rates, and increasing the rate of patient survival as well as patient positive outcome. All these measures will ensure that the organization remain competitive even in the future (Barney, 1995).

References

Barney, J. B. (1995). Looking inside for competitive advantage. Academy of Management Executive, 9(4), 49-61.

Kfshrc.edu.sa. (2016). Research. Retrieved from < http://www.kfshrc.edu.sa/en/home/research

Omnicell.com. (2014). Omnicell and King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center collaborate to deliver excellence in automation. Retrieved from < http://www.omnicell.com/News_and_Events/Press_Releases/Omnicell_and_King_Faisal_Specialist_Hospital_Collaborate_to_Deliver_Excellence_in_Automation.aspx>

Teece, D. J., Pisano, G., & Shuen, A. (1997). Dynamic capabilities and strategic management. Strategic Management Journal, 18(7), 509-533.

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