History and Past Activities
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History and Past Activities |
Frank van der Most
University of Twente, Netherlands
Intermediary organizations and emerging fields of science: the case of nanotechnology (A comparative pilot study of Germany, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Norway)
This paper presents a pilot study of the first phase of a PhD research project (supervised by Barend van der Meulen and Arie Rip) that investigates the question: how do intermediary organizations respond to the emergence of a new field of science?
Nanotechnology emerged in an era that differs in important ways from earlier periods that saw the rise of for example materials science, biotechnology or computer science. For example the end of the cold war saw a shift in science policies from defense towards economic development. ‘Innovation’ has become synonym to economic progress and nanotechnology is linked to it. Science is required to reorient towards and exchange more intimately with industry. Such changes in science policy and science organization are often addressed using ‘Mode1-Mode2’ (Gibbons et al., 1994) or ‘Triple Helix’ (Leydesdorff & Etzkowitz, 1996) concepts. The changes also affect intermediary organizations (see Rip, 1994) and nanotechnology seems a good first case: a new challenge to intermediary organizations in a changed environment.
Intermediary organizations are loosely defined as those organizations that operate between government and science. In the context of the research question they include science funding organizations, research councils, associations of universities and other representational organizations, organizations for technology transfer.
The PhD project and the pilot study revolve around two central hypotheses. First, if the institutional structure of the intermediary organization matches that of the perceived institutional structure of nanotechnology, then nanotechnology will be treated as business as usual. If not, then the intermediary organization will act according to the second hypothesis. Secondly, if science rather than government dominates the intermediary organization, then it is more likely to reorganize its institutional structure.
The pilot study will compare four countries on initial answers to three questions. How did intermediary organizations become involved with nanotechnology? Did the intermediary organization deem it necessary to adapt its internal organization in any way, and if so, why and how? What actions did the intermediary organization take towards science?
Sociology of Science and Technology NETwork - last update: April 2006