Technological uncertainty, market orientation and firms' economic performance

The paper analyzes how a 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.