Managerial Commitments and Technological Change in the US Tire Industry

This paper attempts to reconcile the anomaly between the assumption that inertial forces resist change among successful incumbents to new technology and empirical evidence attesting to willingness to change despite strong economic disincentives. It looks at managerial commitment to employees, customers and communities as influencing response to radical technologies and considers the response by the largest US tire firms to the revolution in radial technology. The paper introduces a theoiy linking commitments and firms' response to disruptive technological changes, provides a brief history of the US tire industry prior to the radial revolution and considers the consequences of the radial revolution. It concludes that managerial commitments played an important role in tire makers' response to radial technology, thus supporting the claim that commitments should be considered with competences and economic incentives in examining how incumbents respond to technological discontinuities.