History and Past Activities
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History and Past Activities |
ESA Conference: Ageing Societies, New Sociology
September 23-26, 2003 in Murcia, Spain
Two streams of sessions of the
Research Network 18: Sociology of Science and Technology (SSTNET)
Convenors:
Raymund Werle: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Köln, Germany (werle@mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de)
Marja Häyrinen Alestalo: Dept. of Sociology, University of Helsinki, Finland (marja.alestalo@helsinki.fi)
Luísa Oliveira: DINÂMIA/ISCTE, Lisboa, Portugal (luisa.oliveira@iscte.pt)
Maarten Mentzel: 38 Johan de Wittstraat, 2334 AR Leiden, The Netherlands (m.a.mentzel@planet.nl)
First Stream: Governing Science and Technology in the Era of Globalization
Tuesday Sept. 23
14.00 - 16.00 session 1 (Campus de La Merced)
Chair: Raymund Werle
1.1. Author(s): Suarez-Villa, Luis
Institution: University of California, School of Social Ecology
Professional Category: Professor
City: Irvine, California
Country: USA
E-mail: LSUAREZ@uci.edu
TECHNOCAPITALISM AND THE GOVERNANCE OF INNOVATION: AN ORGANIZATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Organizations are at the core of technological innovation in the technocapitalist society. How technology is governed therefore depends greatly on the new organizational forms and structures that are developed to produce and sustain innovation. As a new form of market capitalism, technocapitalism is making such intangibles as technological creativity and knowledge the most valuable resources of our time. The most important challenge faced by organizations that generate technological innovation, therefore, is the governance or management of those intangibles. A new ecology of organizations is emerging to deploy creativity and knowledge, which is creating new organizational forms and structures that can exploit them more effectively. The development of new sectors and industries that are likely to dominate the twenty-first century, such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, genetic medicine and molecular computing, is very likely to depend on this new organizational ecology fostered by the emergence of technocapitalism. One of the results of this phenomenon, for example, is the re-creation of many business firms involved in technological innovation as experimental organizations, dedicated to the reproduction of creativity through research and continuous (or systematized) innovation. This contribution considers the new ecology of organizations that is being spawned by technocapitalism and the phenomena that support its emergence. The ways in which organizations are being transformed is addressed subsequently. Six distinctive features representative of the new experimental organizations that are being spawned by technocapitalism are discussed. Finally, a discussion of how this phenomenon affects the globalization of innovation and the global technology race that has ensued will help place the relevant issues in perspective.
Sociology of Science and Technology NETwork - last update: April 2006