Technological uncertainty, market orientation and firms' economic performance

The paper analyzes how the technological environment affects the relationship between market orientation and a firm's economic performance. In particular, the study focuses on a dimension of technological environment that has been neglected by the extant literature to date, i.e., the level of uncertainty for firms created by the homogeneity-heterogeneity of the set of technologies available in an industry. In addition, in contrast to past studies that have been primarily based on cross-sectional analysis and subjective measures, this paper proposes a longitudinal study based on objective measures of market orientation, technological uncertainty and performance. Our findings show the peculiar effect of technological uncertainty on the market orientation-firm's performance link. Moreover, this paper introduces a set of new methodologies, particularly on the measurement of market orientation and of technological uncertainty. The theoretical contribution and practical implications of our results are discussed.