Technology's varying impact on the success of strategic business units within the Miles and Snow typology

The effect of technology on organizations' strategic adjustment to their environment is examined within the Miles and Snow (1978) framework. The model assumes that firms develop stable strategies for adjustment involving entrepreneurial, engineering and administrative phases. The first involves the identification of new opportunities, the second operationalizes the former's results and the last institutionalizes the innovative capacity thus developed. The second phase necessarily involves technological choice of products, services and production and distribution processes. Firms' business strategies determine their technological gains: market analyzers maximize profits from innovations in the short-run; prospectors make heavy technological investments that pay only in the long-run; and defenders of market share profit from innovations both in the short- and long-term.