Exploring technology licensing in the South African manufacturing industry

This paper focuses on the dynamics of organisational and contextual characteristics that notionally determine licensing activities. We describe an attempt, through theory-based empirical research, to probe the causal relationship between several notionally postulated drivers of technology licensing and actual practice of South African manufacturing companies. The description includes the positing of these drivers; records of how respondents to a questionnaire were invited to self-rank their position; and the relationships found between such ranks and licensing activities. Several aspects for further investigation are identified.