Abstract:
Information Technology-Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) industry is an important industry which can provide more economical value to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is rising to become the next best global destination for IT-BPO industry. Hence, the competition among the local as well as foreign firms is very high. They are in need of a strong strategy in order to maintain the competition. To gain competitive advantages they have to have innovations. As a tool of gaining competitive advantage and generating innovations, Learning Orientation (LO) has significant impact on firm success.
Firms which are more learning oriented, can have greater innovations. Various researches were undertaken to illustrate the relationship between firm traits and innovations. However, nobody had done research regarding the firm traits and LO. Findings of previous researches confirm that innovations are affected by various firm traits. LO leads to the innovations. Therefore, firm traits may affect to the LO. Due to difficulty of finding studies related to firm traits and LO in literature, this study is conducted with various gravities. Five type of firm traits were used such as firm age, firm size, annual R and D expenditure, type of ownership and firm structure,.
The present study was undertaken with the objective of finding out the level of LO and the relationship between firm traits with respect to IT/PBO companies in Sri Lanka. Chi-square test of association, descriptive statistics and Spearman's rank correlation were used as analytical tools to examine the jevel of LO and the relationship between firm traits and LO. The population consist of 157 and sample consists of 50 IT/BPO companies. Data was gathered through e-mail surveys by using self-administered questionnaires. LO was tested as dependent variable and firm traits were tested as independent variables.
The results of this study indicates that Majority of companies are having medium level of LO and all the firm traits have negative association with LO. Though the firm structure is having negative association it has a weak positive relationship with LO.
