What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

BRUNO LATOUR, The pasteurization of France, trans. Alan Sheridan and John Law, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1988, 8vo, pp. 273, £23.95. GEORGES CANGUILHEM, Ideology and rationality in the history of the life sciences, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge, Mass., and London, The MIT Press, 1988, 8vo, pp. xi, 160, £17.95. Bruno Latour has written a wonderfully funny book about himself. It is difficult, however, to summarize a text committed to the view that \"Nothing is, by itself, either reducible or irreducible to anything else\", (p. 158). In Latour's opinion, the common view that sociologists of knowledge and scientists are opposed is incorrect. Both groups, according to Latour, are the authors of identical mistakes: reductionism and, relatedly, attempting to conjoin (in the instance of the sociologist) science and society, or (in the instance of the scientist) keeping them apart. For Latour, there are only forces or resistances which different groups encounter and attempt to conquer by forming alliances. These groups, however, are not simply the actors of conventional sociology. They include, for example, microbes, the discovery of the Pasteurians, with which they have populated our world and which we must now take notice of in any encounter or war in which we engage. War is a fundamental metaphor for Latour, since in a war or a battle clashes of armies are later called the \"victory\" of a Napoleon or a Kutuzov. Likewise, he argues, the Pasteurization of France can be viewed as a battle, with its field and its myriad contestants, in which opposing sides attempted to mould and coerce various forces of resistance. Strangely, he points out, the outcome of this huge battle, the labour and struggle of these masses, we attribute to the scientific genius of Pasteur. Pasteur's genius, however, says Latour, lay not in science (for this could be yet another way of making science and society distinct) but as strategist. Pasteur was able to cross disciplinary lines, recruiting allies to laboratory science by persuading them that they were recruiting him. This was possible because, like the armies in battle, they had already done the work of the general. Thus Pasteur's microbiology, which might conventionally be seen as a whole new science, can also be construed as a brilliant reformulation of all that preceded it and made it possible. Hygienists seized on the work of the Pasteurians and the two rapidly became powerful allies because \"The time that they [the hygienists] had made was now working for them\" (p. 52). French physicians, on the other hand, resisted recruitment, since for them it meant enslavement. Finally, however, they recruited the Pasteurians to their enterprise. Pasteurian public health was turned into a triumph of medicine. It is impossible to read this book and not substitute Latour for Pasteur. At the head of his own army, increasingly enlarged by the recruitment of allies, Latour now presents us, in his own language, with something we have made, or at least made possible. The cynic might say, using the old jibe against sociologists, that Latour has explained to us in his own language everything we knew anyway. Retorting thus, however, would be to unselfconsciously make an ally of Latour and miss the point by a narrow margin that might as well be a million miles. Latour says all this much more clearly (and certainly more wittily) than any review. Read it, but beware; in spite of Latour's strictures about irreducibility, the text is not what it seems. This is a recruitment brochure: Bruno needs you. Among the many historians whom Latour convicts by quotation of mistaking the general for the army, Pasteur for all the forces at work in French society, is Georges Canguilhem. Latour uses two quotes from Canguilhem, both taken from the original French version of Ideology and rationality in the life sciences, first published in 1977. Reading Canguilhem after Latour induces a feeling akin to culture shock. Astonishingly, Canguilhem seems almost Anglo-American. Anyone familiar with Canguilhem's epistemological universe would hardly be surprised to discover that Latour finds in it perspectives different from his own. After all, Canguilhem remains committed to the epistemologically distinct entity science or, better still, sciences. Likewise he employs distinctions between science and ideology, as in Spencerian ideology and Darwinian science, which will seem familiar, possibly jaded to English-reading eyes. His text is liberally seeded with unLatourian expressions, including injunctions to distinguish \"between ideology and science\" (p. 39), lamentations that eighteenth-century medicine \"squandered its energy in the erection of systems\" (p. 53), rejoicing that physiology \"liberated itself' from classical anatomy (p. 54), and regret that \"Stahl's influence ... seriously impeded experimental

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Bruno Latour, The pasteurization of France , trans. Alan Sheridan and John Law, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1988, 8vo, pp. 273, £23.95. - Georges Canguilhem, Ideology and rationality in the history of the life sciences , trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge, Mass., and London, The MIT Press, 1988, 8vo, pp. xi, 160, £17.95.

Contents: Introduction: The New Paradigm of Evolutionary Economic Geography 1. The Aims and Scope of Evolutionary Economic Geography Ron Boschma and Ron Martin PART I: CONCEPTUAL CHALLENGES IN EVOLUTIONARY ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY 2. Generalized Darwinism and Evolutionary Economic Geography Jurgen Essletzbichler and David L. Rigby 3. The Place of Path Dependence in an Evolutionary Perspective on the Economic Landscape Ron Martin and Peter Sunley 4. Complexity Thinking and Evolutionary Economic Geography Ron Martin and Peter Sunley 5. The Spatial Evolution of Innovation Networks: A Proximity Perspective Ron Boschma and Koen Frenken PART II: FIRM DYNAMICS, INDUSTRIAL DYNAMICS AND SPATIAL CLUSTERING 6. Entrepreneurship, Evolution and Geography Erik Stam 7. Pecuniary Externalities and the Localized Generation of Technological Knowledge Cristiano Antonelli 8. The Relationship between Multinational Firms and Innovative Clusters Simona Iammarino and Philip McCann 9. Emergence of Regional Clusters: The Role of Spinoffs in the Early Growth Process Michael S. Dahl, Christian R. A stergaard and Bent Dalum 10. A Social-Evolutionary Perspective on Regional Clusters Udo Staber 11. Evolutionary Economic Geography: Regional Systems of Innovation and High-tech Clusters Philip Cooke and Carla de Laurentis PART III: NETWORK EVOLUTION AND GEOGRAPHY 12. Clusters, Networks and Economic Development: An Evolutionary Economics Perspective Elisa Giuliani 13. Reputation, Trust and Relational Centrality in Local Networks: An Evolutionary Geography Perspective Stefano Denicolai, Antonella Zucchella and Gabriele Cioccarelli 14. The Evolution of a Strategic Alliance Network: Exploring the Case of Stock Photography Johannes Gluckler 15. Complexity, Networks and Knowledge Flows Olav Sorenson, Jan W. Rivkin and Lee Fleming 16. The Geography of Knowledge Spillovers: The Role of Inventors' Mobility Across Firms and in Space Stefano Breschi, Camilla Lenzi, Francesco Lissoni and Andrea Vezzulli 17. Growth, Development and Structural Change of Innovator Networks: The Case of Jena Uwe Cantner and Holger Graf PART IV: INSTITUTIONS, CO-EVOLUTION AND ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY 18. An Evolutionary Approach to Localized Learning and Spatial Clustering Anders Malmberg and Peter Maskell 19. Path Dependence and Path Plasticity: The Co-evolution of Institutions and Innovation - the German Customized Business Software Industry Simone Strambach 20. On the Notion of Co-evolution in Economic Geography Eike W. Schamp 21. Locked in Decline? On the Role of Regional Lock-ins in Old Industrial Areas Robert Hassink PART V: STRUCTURAL CHANGE, AGGLOMERATION EXTERNALITIES AND REGIONAL BRANCHING 22. The Evolution of Spatial Patterns over Long Time-Horizons: The Relation with Technology and Economic Development Jan Lambooy 23. The Information Economy and its Spatial Evolution in English Cities James Simmie 24. An Evolutionary Model of Firms' Location with Technological Externalities Giulio Bottazzi and Pietro Dindo Index

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The Handbook of Evolutionary Economic Geography

Three articles in this volume of STI-Studies explore these developments. Frank Kleeman, Gunter Vos, and Kerstin Rieder analyze a new phenomenon named “crowdsourcing”, which has altered the roles of producers and consumers in internet-based businesses. Niels Taubert’s article deals with decision-making processes in open-source projects – a new mode of voluntary distant cooperation that only came about by the novel opportunities of the internet. Jorg Potthast asks for the new quality of digital media in controlling complex systems. In the fourth contribution Joscha Wullweber presents an analysis of nanotechnology-discourses, drawing our attention to another strand of technological innovation, which might revolutionize our lives as well.

Science, Technology & Innovation Studies

/pdf/the-place-of-path-dependence-in-an-evolutionary-perspective-ksv5c8ef8g.pdf

The Place of Path Dependence in an Evolutionary Perspective on the Economic Landscape

Path dependency as it is described by Arthur and David portrays technological developments as historically embedded, emergent processes. In contrast, Garud and Karnoe's notion of path creation emphasises the role of strategic change and deliberate action for the development of new technologies. In this article, we integrate both concepts into a general understanding of path processes which accounts for emergent as well as deliberate modes of path constitution. In addition, we distinguish between three consecutive phases of technological path developments. Both conceptualisations are used to create an analytical grid against which empirical cases of path processes can be matched. Based on this general understanding, we further outline how concepts from science and technology studies and institutional theory can help to elaborate the role of deliberate action and emergence in the stabilisation of technological paths over time.

Integrating path dependency and path creation in a general understanding of path constitution. The role of agency and institutions in the stabilisation of technological innovations

Integrating path dependency and path creation in a general understanding of path constitution

The emergence of an envisioned future. Sensemaking in the case of “Industrie 4.0” in Germany

This book traces how the current wave of industrial digitalization relates to processes of domination and emancipation. It aims to counter techno-deterministic narratives that would connect a perceived new 'industrial revolution' with clear-cut societal consequences. In order to do this, the volume intervenes into three ongoing discussions which pertain to emancipation and domination in the workplace , promises of emancipation through digital fabrication, and the idea of emancipating, configuring, and infrastructuring the users of industrial products. Within this framework it addresses topics including democratic participation, management thinking, gamification, the maker movement, reshoring, digital platforms, and the automation of healthcare.

Digitalization in Industry: Between Domination and Emancipation

Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Meyer, U., & Schubert, C. (2005). Die Konstitution technologischer Pfade: Überlegungen jenseits der Dichotomie von Pfadabhängigkeit und Pfadkreation. (TUTS Working Papers, 6-2005). Berlin: Technische Universität Berlin, Fak. VI Planen, Bauen, Umwelt, Institut für Soziologie Fachgebiet Techniksoziologie. https://nbn-resolving.org/ urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-11910

Die Konstitution technologischer Pfade: Überlegungen jenseits der Dichotomie von Pfadabhängigkeit und Pfadkreation

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