Beyond Innovation: Technology, Institution and Change as Categories for Social Analysis PDF
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Beyond Innovation DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125.0001 Other Palgrave Pivot titles Dirk Jacob Wolfson: The Political Economy of Sustainable Development: Valuation, Distribution, Governance Twyla J. Hill: Family Caregiving in Aging Populations Alexander M. Stoner and Andony Melathopoulos: Freedom in the Anthropocene: Twentieth Century Helplessness in the Face of Climate Change Christine J. Hong: Identity, Youth, and Gender in the Korean American Christian Church Cenap Çakmak and Murat Ustaoğlu: Post-Conflict Syrian State and Nation Building: Economic and Political Development Richard J. Arend: Wicked Entrepreneurship: Defining the Basics of Entreponerology Rubén Arcos and Randolph H. 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No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978-1-137-54712-5 PDF ISBN: 978-1-349-55437-9 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. www.palgrave.com/pivot DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125 Contents Preface vi 1 Innovation Monomania 1 2 Technology, Institution and Change 11 3 Market Institutions 27 4 Evolutionary Economics 37 5 Performativity 41 6 Knowledge 47 7 Agency 57 8 Clusters, Systems and Blocks 67 9 Resistance to Change 77 10 Commons 88 11 Technological Determinism 93 12 Modernity and Its Critics 102 13 Postmodernity 111 14 Hybridity and Technology Transfer 119 15 Conclusions 128 Bibliography 135 Index 159 DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125.0001 v Preface The background for this book is the increasing specializa- tion of scholarly investigations of technological and insti- tutional change. Although many studies of this particularly dynamic area are interdisciplinary, drawing on philosophy, history, sociology, economics and so on for methods, analytical frameworks and other necessary prerequisites, certain aspects have come to dominate over others. For instance, much of the research on technical change deals with innovation in firms and how to support it. The purpose of this book is to counterweigh this dominating firm-centric research trend by broadening our thinking about technological and institutional change. It is done by a multidisciplinary review of the most common ideas about the dynamics between technology and institutions. This book thus balances between being, on one hand, an introduction for students interested in different views and perspectives on technological and institutional change without paying attention to borders between different academic disciplines and, on the other, an instrument for cross-fertilization between different strands of thought and modes of analyses. The ideas behind this text evolved in an interdisciplinary setting, the Sector Committee of Technology, Institution and Change, set up by the Swedish research foundation Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. The purpose of this group has been to discuss and initiate social and humanities research in the intersection between technical applications or political usages and economy, democracy and ethics. The underlying assumption is that elusive technological vi DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125.0002 Preface vii change in complex institutional environments indicates worthwhile research problems as well as research opportunities. There is simply a demand for updated knowledge about different social processes leading to institutional and technological dynamics. One important strategy to achieve this is to review and bring together existing results from a variety of disciplines and research fields and this is what this book sets out to do. In addition, there is also a demand for a broader, critical and public discussion about which technologies to develop, by what means and with what ends. Insights from different experiences are necessary to develop this theme in order to pursue a democratic discourse. This book is thus written with the assumption that ideas materialized in texts actually can make a difference. I want to express my appreciation, not only to Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, which set up the Sector Committee of Technology, Institution and Change making this endeavour possible, but also to the individual members of the committee who have all whole heartedly supported my attempts to bring the many different ideas and concepts together in one short book. Göran Blomqvist, managing director at Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Mats G. Hansson, biomedical ethics at Uppsala University, Kristina Höök, human–machine interaction at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Ericka Johnson, technology and social change at Linköping University, Fredrik Lundmark, research manager at Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Cecilia Magnusson-Sjöberg, cyber law at Stockholm University, Christian Munthe, practical philoso- phy at University of Gothenburg, Lars J. Nilsson, environmental and energy systems studies at Lund University, Urban Strandberg, political science at University of Gothenburg, Jane Summerton, technology and social change at Linköping University and Nina Wormbs, history of technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, have all commented on earlier versions of this text. Thank you for your patience! I have also received many constructive and helpful comments from the seminar group in the Department of History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University. In addition, anonymous reviewers have supplied very valuable comments improving the text considerably. I am alone responsible for all remaining shortcomings and errors. DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125.0002 1 Innovation Monomania Abstract:Innovation has become the buzzword in a number of policy areas including research policy, economic policy and environmental policy. In the struggle against economic stagnation, innovation policies, sometimes in alliance with the academic field of innovation studies, promote dreams about institutions and technologies in which change can never be turned into nightmares. The ambition of this book is, however, to point to a number of alternative models and theories within the social sciences that describe or explain dynamics between institutions and technologies. The purpose is to demonstrate the rich multitude of ideas about technology, institution and change beyond innovation in the context of liberal markets. Keywords: innovation; innovation paradigm; innovation society; innovation studies Kaiserfeld, Thomas. Beyond Innovation: Technology, Institution and Change as Categories for Social Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. doi:10.1057/9781137547125.0003. DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125.0003 Beyond Innovation Today’s Western society is obsessed with change and more specifically technological change. Innovation has become the buzzword in a number of policy areas including research policy, economic policy and environ- mental policy.1 There does not seem to be a single challenge to humanity that cannot be remedied by some technological innovation including more drastic methods such as geoengineering. This trust in technology is often enough combined with an equally strong trust in economic institutions such as liberal markets, an ideal type where suppliers of identical products compete for consumers with a minimum of regula- tions to govern behaviour. Definitions of innovation accordingly include notions of some sort of check like a demand for success in one way or another. A typical definition thus frames innovation as “ideas success- fullyy applied in organizational outcomes and processes.”2 Consequently, considerable amounts of resources are funnelled into the development of different technologies or knowledge that is assumed to have a potential for commercialization.3 For instance, the European Union framework programme for research and innovation running from 2014 to 2020 and named Horizon 2020 includes an initiative called Innovation Union. This is a “strategy to create an innovation-friendly environment that makes it easier for great ideas to be turned into products and services that will bring our economy growth and jobs.”4 Innovation Union is a very representative symbol of the presently dominant view on technology, institution and change. With the right investments and the right strategy to create “an innovation-friendly environment”, commercial success stories are supposed to follow to everyone’s advantage. Such ideas rest on basic propositions of economic growth theory, “that in order to sustain a positive growth rate of output per capita in the long run, there must be continual advances in tech- nological knowledge in the form of new goods, new markets, or new processes.”5 Important also are Joseph Schumpeter’s notions of quality- improving innovations, as the engine of capitalist growth with entrepre- neurs driven by a strong will as the cornerstone. Since new innovations destroy the results of earlier ones, making them obsolete, an important result is so-called creative destruction.6 In the context of innovation, technological development is measured in commercial value, institu- tions according to how much they support the creation of new innova- tions, and, finally, change is always and in general beneficial. It is hardly surprising that innovation studies have thrived as an academic discipline in the social sciences and at business schools during the past decades. DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125.0003
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