Impact of Advanced Technology Use on Firm Performance in the Canadian Food Processing Sector

📖 The Scoop

This paper investigates the evolution of industrial structure in the Canadian food processing sector and its relationship to technological change. It does so by examining the impact on plant performance of adopting advanced manufacturing technologies, among them information & communication technologies. The study utilizes a linked dataset combining advanced technology-use data from a 1998 special survey with firm performance data derived from administrative records covering 1988-97. The data file contains information on advanced technology-use, plant characteristics, and plant performance. The paper first examines the characteristics of firms that adopt advanced technologies. It also enumerates the extent to which plants replace one another by transferring market share and the extent to which this has been accompanied by changes in relative productivity & profitability. It then studies the effect of technological choices on plant performance, using measures such as growth in productivity and market share, and examines the relationship between the use of advanced manufacturing technology (such as programmable controllers, aseptic processing, and computer networks) and those two measures of plant performance.

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