Past Research News and Events - Seminar Series

Seminar

Topic:

A study into the role of ICT in the home building industry in WA with a focus on strategic applications versus embedded processes

Presentation by:

Hosein Gharavi

Time:

Friday 7th November, 12 noon

Venue:

Val Pervan Room (JO.2.443)

Comments:

All invited to attend

Abstract:

The development of Internet and Internet-based trading has transformed the way firms operate in the stockbroking industry particularly since the latter part of the 1990s. The change in business results from Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) being initially adopted by a select number of brokers and brokerage houses and the subsequent mimicking of this adoption by other brokers in the industry. This diffusion across the stockbroking industry signifies change, turbulence and a period of disequilibrium. The stockbroking industry is one of the most successful industries in the uptake and diffusion of ICT in its operations. This has resulted in many experiments in industry and organisational forms (brick and mortar in traditional brokerage houses, virtual or e-brokers at the peak of the e-commerce bubble in the 1990 and finally the rise of hybrid brokers working in parallel with the virtual brokers in the present day). It is proposed that in order to explore the ICT-enabled diffusion patterns in the stockbroking industry, one can construct the ICT-enabled transformation by looking at the ecological and institutional trends in the change process within a realm of Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) as put forward by Rogers . By doing so, the aim is to develop a model that explains how firms within the stockbroking industry changed and how this resulted in new organisational and new industry form(s) being selected. By identifying the factors that influence the nature of diffusion, one can construct a model to explain the change process as the technology further evolves thus resulting in further changes in the industry and players that inhabit the stockbroking industry. This allows one to identify the dynamics of industry structure as firms experiment with the ICT induced options resulting in the development of a model that describes the factors that influence the diffusion of innovation and the resultant industry as well as organisational structure. Through the identification of the industry dynamics, a model can be developed explore this structural transition as a result of ICT diffusion. It can also be used to examine future ICT evolutions and its effects not only in the stockbroking industry but also in other service oriented industries as well.