Achieving competitive advantage through humanware adoption: special reference with rice millers of Agri business sector in Sri Lanka

Abstract

In Sri Lanka, an increasing number of rice production technologies and management techniques have been introduced. Despite the introduction of the rice production technologies, rice production has not reached a required level of standard. This study therefore analysed the factors associated with adoption of improved humanware components in rice production industry and the culture of the organization in this regard. Random sampling technique was used in selecting 173 rice producers from the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka and 50 millers in the North Central Province (NCP) who possesses a well-developed rice production facility in order to benchmark the performance of the millers in Eastern Province. Data were collected with the aid of a structured questionnaire and analysed using descriptive statistics with correlation and regression analyses. The result shows that the organizational culture has a positive relationship with technology adoption. Especially the dimensions of organizational culture such as institutional behaviour, corporate culture and organizational structure show moderate relations while degree of innovativeness and changing attitudes were at negligible relations among Eastern millers. It emphasizes that the rice millers have to improve their change of attitudes and innovation to do a successful business. A higher level of acceptance and relation was shown between all dimensions of the variable in North Central province’s rice millers. This was proved that a high level of practices in organizational culture helps to NCP millers to get competitive advantage in the business. Organizational culture factors need to be taken into consideration by the eastern millers when the changes are incorporated with practices in technology perspectives.