Abstract
Technology strategies have assumed an important role in providing technological leadership to firms. A study conducted by the author in the East, revealed that the performance of firms is influenced by the type of technology strategies adopted. This result provided the motivation to explore if such strategies are relevant to the management of the 'services' sector and if their performance too is influenced by these adoptions. There is dearth of similar studies in the literature. More importantly, in this age of technology, there is a dire need for management to understand and implement appropriate technology strategies. The results could contribute to the literature/management in developing a set of strategies which could be termed as 'global' and applied to any sector and those termed as 'unique' which are specific to firm/service sector. In terms of the services sector, the nearest similarity to the technology intensive firms appear to be the vocational and technical institutions (VTI). The other justification to focus on technical institutions was that their performance is more affected by technology strategies/policies than the traditional primary and secondary schools/colleges. The big study sought to identify and analyse the level of awareness of participants on technology strategy issues and the perception of departments (including those in the Ministries) about technology management, gender, local/expatriate, qualification, teaching experience, years since last professional course completed, industry experience, understanding of quality, and department employed. This paper attempts to present the results on that part of the study which deals with the relationship between the type of the managers/management (gender, qualification, age etc) and the application of technology strategies. The participants included the staff and heads of departments at a technical college from an oil rich ASEAN country, the senior management at the college and the policy makers at the Department of Technical Education (DTE). The technology strategy (TS) and technology management (TM) data was desired from all the three groups. Data was collected through a questionnaire and analyzed using statistical techniques. A pilot-study helped to refine the questionnaire before it was administered. The study sets the tone to open up discussions and research interest towards applying strategic technology management tools in the education sector in a rapidly growing digital world. The type of managers/management revealed as part of this study has implications to the senior planners in the education sector in keeping pace with the technology age by providing valuable inputs to develop technology strategies/policies.