Organisational learning, strategic rigidity and technology adoption: Implications for electric utilities and renewable energy firms

This paper examines the implications of strategic rigidness for technology adoption behaviours among electric utilities. Such behaviours lead to heterogeneity in firm performance and consequently affect the electric utility industry. The paper's central aim is to identify and describe the implications of strategic rigidness for a utility firm's decision making in adopting newer renewable energy technologies. The findings indicate that not all utility firms are keen to adopt these new technologies, as these firms have traditionally been operating efficiently with a more conventional and mature technological arrangement that has become embedded in the organisational routine. Case studies of Iberdrola S.A. and Enel S.p.A. as major electric utilities are detailed to document mergers and acquisitions and technology adoption decisions. The results indicate that technology adoption behaviours vary widely across utility firms with different organisational learning processes and core capabilities.

Strategic rigidity and foresight for technology adoption among electric utilities

The variation in the adoption of a technology as a major source of competitive advantage has been attributed to the wide-ranging strategic foresight and the integrative capability of a firm. These possible areas of competitive advantage can exist in the periphery of the firm's strategic vision and can get easily blurred as a result of rigidness and can permeate in the decision-making process of the firm. This article explores how electric utility firms with a renewable energy portfolio can become strategically rigid in terms of adoption of newer technologies. The reluctance or delay in the adoption of new technology can be characterized as strategic rigidness, brought upon as a result of a firm's core competence or core capability in the other, more conventional technology arrangement. This paper explores the implications of such rigidness on the performance of a firm and consequently on the energy eco-system. The paper substantiates the results by emphasizing the case of Iberdrola S.A., an incumbent firm as a wind energy developer and its adoption decision behavior. We illustrate that the very routines that create competitive advantage for firms in the electric utility industry are vulnerable as they might also develop as sources of competitive disadvantage, when firms confront environmental change and uncertainty.

Report to the F.T.C. on the use of automatic fuel adjustment clauses and the fuel procurement practices of investor-owned electric utilities.

Primary authors: Michele F. Crown, L. Jorn Dakin, and Douglas W. Webbink.

Report on voluntary conservation program for electric utilities /

Mode of access: Internet.

Statistics of electric utilities in the United States for the year ended December 31, 1937. Classes A and B ...

Photoprinted.

"Rates and rate-making" for electric utilities.

Thesis (M. S.)--Cornell University, 1921.

An analytical history of state regulation of gas and electric utilities in Illinois /

Caption title.

Illinois Commerce Commission report to the General Assembly : experimental programs initiated by electric utilities under section 16-106 of the Electric Service Customer Choice and Rate Relief Law of 1997.

"This report is submitted in compliance with section 16-106 of the Electric Customer Choice and Rate Relief Law of 1997."

Incentive/economic development rates : a short-term marketing option for electric utilities /

"November 1984."

Summary of annual reports filed by electric utilities required by section 16-130 of the Electric Service Customer Choice and Rate Relief Law of 1997.

Title from cover; varies slightly.

The impact of the 1977-78 coal miners' strike on Illinois electric utilities.

"Prepared by Dr. Ajay K. Sanghi and Mr. Charles A. Burbridge, with the assistance of Mr. Russell E. Baldwin."

Uniform classification of accounts for electric utilities,

Mode of access: Internet.

The Clean Air Act, the electric utilities, and the coal market.

Mode of access: Internet.