Shaping Technology as a Means for Transforming Society: The Case of the GSM Standard for Mobile Telecommunication

Science Studies, Vol. 12(1999) No. 2, 64–82 Something is happening in the field of knowledge generation and technological development. The phenomenon has been described in the sociology of science and technology as the emergence of a new mode of knowledge production (Gibbons et al., 1994). Studies in industrial sociology and in economics address the development in a more normative way arguing that global competition forces speed up the generation and utilisation of new knowledge and products, in brief: of the innovation process (e.g. Lundvall and Borrás, 1997). It has also been argued that particularly innovative ways of combining existing techniques, technological strategies and distributed bodies of knowledge are likely to open up promising fields of application and new markets. Moreover, there is a consensus that both tendencies result in an increase in pressure on the established societal institutions of knowledge and technology production to adapt to the new and ever-changing conditions. The consequences seem to be evident: industry and academia have to establish new forms of co-operation and a new division of labour to remain, or to become, competitive. Innovation networks are often quoted as an efficient way of coping with these problems. Like social networks in general (see Powell, 1990), an innovation network is usually conceptualised as an alternative means of co-ordinating actions, different from both markets and hierarchies. In networks participants follow their individual interests and strategies. But they do so in a collaborative manner: their actions are coupled in such a way that every actor’s success depends on his partners in the network also being successful. In both sociological and economic theories the relations within social networks are characterised as being informal, rather than formalised and largely based on personal communication. The exchange of information is reciprocal. And all of this is faciliShaping Technology as a Means of Transforming Society: The Case of the GSM Standard for Mobile Telecommunication