An investigation on factors affecting the adoption of technological advancements in garment industry of Sri Lanka

Abstract

Sri Lanka's largest manufacturing industry, serving as the country's principal export earner and the largest employer in the industrial sector, is the garment manufacturing industry. Computerbased technology will be required to be competitive in the market. In recent years, there has been a technical shift in the design and manufacture of apparel to meet client demand for fastchanging fashion garments. Business must react fast to the fast-moving business environment and the firm performance increases only through quick adoption to technological advancement. The main objective of this study is to investigate the factors effecting technological advancement in the garment industry of Sri Lanka. A research gap exists as this aspect of the garment industry has not broadly been tested before in Sri Lankan context. The methodology is quantitative and an online questionnaire to collect data has been distributed among the employees of Sri Lankan garment industry. The results are based on two regression models. The results portray that technical training, employee commitment and management commitment has a significant positive impact on adoption to technological advancement. Also, the results depict that the impact of employee commitment on adoption of technological advancement is moderated by gender. Therefore, these results provide new insights to the employers as it illustrates the aspects that they should be focused on to adopt to technological advancement. Furthermore, these results are important to investors of the garment industry in making their decisions, government to implement relevant policies and procedures in developing the garment industry and especially to management of the organizations of the garment industry to establish and create the appropriate working environment to motivate the employees towards adoption to technological advancement.