SASE 2005: Abstracts Network F

Abstracts Network F - Knowledge, Economy, and Society

Jenny Andersson (Uppsala University, Sweden)
E-Mail address: jenny.andersson@ekhist.uu.se
Accounting for Knowledge. Representations of Knowledge, Capital, and the Creation of Value in the Third Way

The concept of the knowledge economy serves as the guiding star for the ongoing restructuring of economic and social institutions. Interpreting the dynamics of knowledge driven value creation is at the heart of the project of the Third way. This paper will critically probe a number of themes in third way discourse of the knowledge economy: the definition of knowledge as (common and individual) good, measuring and accounting for knowledge-driven growth, the notion of intangible (human and social) capital, the idea of the individual as the container of intangible capital, and the social investment strategies aimed at the enhancement of value of that capital. In conclusion, the interlinkages between knowledge, capital, and community as elements defining the boundaries between the knowledge economy and the knowledge society will be analyzed. The paper will compare British and Swedish Third way discourse (New Labour and SAP), and the categorizations and including/excluding norms that reside within representations of knowledge as good will be brought out through the use of critical discourse analysis, gender, and post colonial theory.

Ana Andjelic (New School University, USA)
Paolo Carpignano (New School University, USA)
E-Mail address: aa2245@columbia.edu; carpi@newschool.edu
Personalized Recommendations as a New Form of Marketing: Toward Political Economy of Rumor

The paper examines political economy of personalized recommendation systems as the new marketing forms. In online retail markets, like Amazon.com or eBay, personalized reviews, recommendations and collaborative filtering are social practices used to structure the markets and to enable users to navigate through the vast amounts of available information. Information provided by other users is a critical tool in individual calculations of a product value. Commercial transactions are embedded in social relations of reputations and trust built among market members. Similar mechanism becomes increasingly used in traditional, "offline" markets. Recommendations obtained through social channels, from other consumers of the product, are viewed as more reliable than those provided by institutionalized, traditional marketing channels and present the critical navigating and calculative tool in individual market transactions. "Word-of-mouth" and consumers' rumors, once regarded by traditional marketing models as external and disruptive, increasingly come to their core. As collaborative filtering and personalized recommendations gain in importance as the new forms of marketing, the question becomes who do we trust in our calculations? Who benefits from these new calculative tools? Who are the new "centers" of "trustworthy" information? How advertisers and big industry brands can use the social structures of markets to fabricate the "buzz" around the products and to - through word-of mouth - personally influence individual purchasing decisions? More generally, what happens when calculative tools used in one context are transported to another context? How do they reconfigure the existing calculative practices? The paper analyzes how the new forms of "social" marketing complement the traditional blockbuster marketing model, how they change it, and what is the politics of this process.

Maria del Rosio Barajas Escamilla (El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico)
E-Mail address: rbarajas@colef.mx
The Role of the Organizational Capacities in the Processes of Innovation: The Experience in Three Northern Border Cities of Mexico
The main purpose of this paper is to analyze how industrial plants that are branches of global firms, can create new organizational capacities that influence innovation capacities, which is an important condition for the firms to participate in innovation processes and to be a part of regional system of innovation. I will take advantage of the data base created in 2003 under a multidisciplinary project which I participated in. The 298 cases' survey includes plants from the electronics and auto-parts sectors, and plants located in three northern border cities in Mexico: Tijuana, Mexicali and Ciudad Juárez..

I use the Bell and Pavitt (1992) technological and innovation capacities' methodology to test my hypothesis in the sense that these industrial plants experienced an important evolution in their organizational capacities. This occurred as a consequence of the acquisition of knowledge and new capacities that are accumulated by qualified and unqualified workers. The organizational capacities that I analyze are captured through different indicators such as: participation of the plants and their workers in advanced organizational structure, advanced organizational methods and techniques such as SIX SIGMA, continuous improvement, work teams, certification programs on labor competencies, quality and environmental processes, and through the level of dependency from the main corporation.

Donald J. Calista (Marist College, USA)
E-Mail address: donald.calista@marist.edu
Reversing the Deluge of Information Problem: The Opportunity Costs of Redundancy among Domestic Intelligence Agencies

Although deluge of information is problematic, deficiency of information is an equally troubling situation. The paper advances that the use of redundancy by domestic intelligence agencies is a value-added way to counteract transnational terror networks. The usual reform prescription calls for these agencies to reduce their prior lapses by streamlining inter-agency relationships. While not disputing the wisdom of such reforms, they are secondary to the significance of transforming intra-agency informational processes. If employing redundancy violates conventional organizational wisdom, it also produces opportunity costs that can redress transnational terror's organizational exceptionality. To evade detection and to prevent penetration, terror networks underwhelm communications: members communicate both sparsely and discretely that limits their understandings of planning. As prevailing organizational paradigms cannot address these anomalies, they require responses from an oppositional-contrarian-strategy (Kuhn, 1962). Accordingly, domestic security agencies overwhelm their intelligence capabilities-this redundant strategy aligns transnational terror's sparseness in articulating and discreteness in processing of communications with exhaustiveness in sourcing and robustness in sharing of information. The conclusions show that operationalizing exhaustive and robust information improves intra-agency intelligence effectiveness that, in turn, becomes the basis for streamlining inter-agency connections, as redundancy overcomes informational deficiencies and creates commonalities among them.

Wai-keung Chung (Singapore Management University, Singapore)
E-Mail address: wkchung@smu.edu.sg
Knowledge Economy and the Roles of Government: A Comparative Study on the East Asian Four Dragons

It is widely accepted that the governments in East Asian countries had played a significant role during the industrial transformation of their economies after WWII. This paper discusses if these governments have once again positioned themselves in a strategic way, and if so, in what way, in facilitating the transformation of their capital-intensive manufacturing economies to a globally competitive knowledge economies. My research focuses on identifying the prerequisite conditions for the development of a knowledge-intensive economy, and to compare and contrast what the governments of the Four Dragons " Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea have done so far in creating the institutional infrastructure for the economic transformation. While technological infrastructure is essential, advancement from traditional manufacturing economy to the new economy requires the development of a pro-IT institutional setting, social by nature, that could nourish innovation and creativity, and more significantly, a proper utilization of information within the general public. With this in mind, this paper particularly focuses on how each government interprets the social nature of information, and determines to what extent the governments have enhanced a proper utilization of it.

Robyn M. Dawes (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
E-Mail address: rd1b@andrew.cmu.edu
A Case History of Trumping Calculation With Intuition When Calculation Would Benefit Everyone Involved

Meehl's classic 1954 book summarized about 20 comparisons of clinical versus actuarial predictions of important human outcomes; in no case did clinical (intuitive) prediction outperform actuarial (statistical) prediction. Twenty-five years later, he wrote: "There is no controversy in social science which shows such a large body of qualitatively diverse studies coming out so uniformly in the same direction as this one" (1986, p.372). Recently, he and Grove (1996) conducted a meta-analysis of roughly 145 studies, again supporting the 1954 conclusion. This conclusion holds even when the clinician has access to information not used in the model, or when the coefficients of the model are only approximately correct (Dawes, 1979). Both people evaluated and society as a whole would benefit from superior as opposed to inferior prediction. Nevertheless, decision makers generally eschew statistical prediction rules for intuitively compelling alternatives, such as interview impressions (even when -- unbeknownst to the interviewer -- the interviewee is responding on a random basis [Dawes and Dana]). While researchers attend to numbers indicating what does better than what, decision makers often appear to have almost a phobia about such "mere numbers."

Cristina de Abreu (Universidade Lusíada, Portugal)
Ana Martins (Universidade Lusíada, Portugal)
E-Mail address: crisabreu@por.ulusiada.pt; anamartins@por.ulusiada.pt
Lobbies and Numerus Clausus Policy in the Portuguese Higher Education System

The main purpose of this study is to identify the determining factors of the Numerus Clausus Policy within a extremely restrictive Portuguese higher education medical sector. The theoretical framework is based upon the Public Choice Theory, more specifically Rent-Seeking Theory. Moreover, the paper will analyze the relationship between this abovementioned policy and the excessively low ratio of doctors per one hundred inhabitants as compared to other European countries. Further analysis will highlight the role portrayed by the 'Medical Order' within a social and historical perspective emphasizing the power and influence of this interest group within the Portuguese political and legal system.

Richard J. Fenton (SUNY Brockport, USA)
E-Mail address: rfenton@brokcport.edu
Is There a Politically Correct Way to Teach Economics?

For a half century after World War II, students, particularly in the United States, had been introduced to the discipline of Economics by some variation of the classic Samuelson Principles text originally published in l948. Modifications in economic theory tended to result in additions to the text, which forced professors to decide what to teach and what to emphasize but left the basic micro/macro model in tact. In the early l990's a new young author was given an impressive advance to write "the next Samuelson." By the turn of the century a plethora of new Principles books had emerged, which were shorter, tighter, and less comprehensive, with significantly different macroeconomics sections. New intermediate macroeconomic texts both preceded and followed these "new" Principles texts. The result is that we have at least two distinct approaches to the teaching of macroeconomics. One of these argues strongly for a minimization of the role of government in the macroeconomy, arguing particularly against the use of fiscal policy (except in the form of tax reduction.) Some, using this approach, have almost reduced the work of John Maynard Keynes to a footnote or an appendix. There are others, of course, who continue to teach the traditional Keynesian model, including an activist role for government in maintaining stability in the economy. Some contend that the result is that students may be learning very different things in presumably very similar courses. This paper reviews the current literature on the Principles course and suggests an alternative approach to introducing students to economics and teaching of macroeconomics that may make the above title moot.

Johanna Gibson (University of London, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: j.gibson@qmul.ac.uk
Community Resources: Counting Tradition and Securing Property

Intellectual property law may be understood as a kind of narration or story of knowledge in western society, representing creativity within a framework of criteria for protection and justifications for monopolies. That which does not come within its criteria, such as traditional knowledge, may not register as creative output or innovation, but merely as "history," on the periphery of the dominant narrative of progress. In other words, intellectual property systems necessarily leave exceptions out in order to achieve a sense of totality for the record of knowledge. Such exceptions include, most notably, the traditional knowledge of Indigenous and traditional communities in both developing and developed countries. The stability of tradition, the source of legitimacy for community and traditional innovation for such communities, is counted as almost contrary to creativity within governing models of advancement. This paper will examine this tension between efforts to recognize and preserve traditional knowledge within international frameworks for disseminating that knowledge, and the potential to recognize and account for community within international legal systems, based upon international legitimacy for local customary laws, will be examined toward a sui generis framework for community resources.

Matthew Gill (London School of Economics, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: m.j.gill@lse.ac.uk
The Exploitation of Facts: Accounting Technicalities in Practice

The very language accountants use affects what they are able to conceptualize. That language is therefore an important factor in understanding why accountants behave as they do, both in everyday situations and with respect to recent accounting scandals (e.g. Enron) where their actions have not always made sense to those outside the profession. This paper will examine how accountants construct facts linguistically. Using material from interviews with young Chartered Accountants working in London, it will reveal the extent to which the construction of accounting facts is not technical but is instead pragmatic, metaphorical, and emotional. It will discuss both how accountants exploit the category of fact, and how they cope with its fragility. The paper will argue that UK accounting apparently technical basis, reinforced by its increasingly rules-based technical standards, obscures the ways in which accounting decisions are, and must be, thought through in practice. The aspiration to truth and fairness (which underpins all UK accounting standards) cannot avoid being normative. The paper will therefore conclude that a reappraisal of accounting facts in relation to professional ethics is necessary if the interpretations and judgments accountants make are to retain their legitimacy.

Crague Gilles (Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, France)
Robin Foot (Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées / Laboratoire Techniques Territoires Sociétés, France)
E-Mail address: crague@enpc.fr; foot@enpc.fr
What Good is Metrology?

The social and technical sciences have highlighted the contribution of metrology, together with data processing centers in formatting our society. Nothing now seems beyond the scope of computation and rational decision-making. However, data processing centers frequently use such metrology in surprising ways, which forces us to review our models concerning their role and function. This is particularly true in respect of urban transport. Thus, we invest considerable sums of money in urban transport networks in order to set up measurement systems for the purpose of providing information, in real time, to data processing centers, concerning flows of commuters and transport vehicles. But nobody really knows what purpose this serves and other strategies are used for regulating lines and routes. Thus, in order to program investments, we use complex models for forecasting traffic, supplemented by various data concerning household journey plans. However, we never control the relevance of such forecasts once the projects have been completed. Apart from assessing its computational role, this paper also seeks to understand other ways in which metrology functions, based on empirical examples.

Andrea Glorioso (Firenze Tecnologia, Italy)
E-Mail address: sama@miu-ft.org
Community Building in Free Software Projects: The Right of Protection vs. the Need of Inclusion

Agnula is a project funded until April 2004 by the European Commission and handled as a mixed private/volunteer project until now. The goal of the project was and is to spread Free Software in the professional audio and sound domains. The project had to tackle several issues, most of which were related to the novelty of the concept of "Free Software" for the European Commission. One year after the start of the project it was decided to invest substantial resources into "building a community", making the life of the project more open to the reference groups (i.e. the users and developers gravitating around Free Software audio mailing lists) as well as constructing a "real" community of people working with and on behalf of the project. This paper investigates the tension that can and will exist between law and the genuine need of "we, the people" to build a common identity through recognition of common goals, tools, ethics and morality, and the difficulties in managing a fluid, network-enabled, faith-based group while having to deal with a corpus of law which is built upon the pre-eminence of the individual neo-liberal singular entity.

Frederick Guy (Birkbeck College, University of London, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: f.guy@bbk.ac.uk
Implications of the Institutional Contingency of Intellectual Property

Coordinated market economies (CMEs) have relative strength in organizationally embedded intellectual capital (IC), while liberal market economies (LMEs) are strong in alienable IC, or intellectual property (IP). The distinction between embedded IC and IP is important both for understanding the competitive fortunes of different national economies, and for understanding the dynamics of globalization. It has been argued that strength in alienable IP gives the LMEs a competitive advantage in the information age. Yet the value of alienable IP to specific firms or countries is contingent on the shape of IP law. This law is contested. We review the ways in which IP, as it applies e.g. to software, pharmaceuticals, genetic code, and recorded entertainment, is contested. We also present evidence on the dependence of the LMEs, and the US in particular, on contested IP. IC is a force for globalization: higher R&D costs and shorter product life cycles increase returns to scale, making the protection of national industrial markets prohibitively expensive. Yet in many cases the 'returns to scale' are artifacts of the IP system. Under a different IP regime, not only could the LMEs lose their competitive advantage, but the pressure for low trade barriers would weaken.

Eszter Hargittai (Northwestern University, USA)
Amanda Hinnant (Northwestern University, USA)
E-Mail address: sase05@eszter.com; a-hinnant@northwestern.edu
21st Century Digital Inequality: Differences in Young Adults' Online Behavior

Internet use now plays an important part in people's economic and social activities. However, while diffusion of the medium has increased, the uses to which the medium is put vary considerably across different segments of the population. Are some people more likely to benefit from the medium than others? This paper takes a refined approach to digital inequality in examining differences in young adults' use of the Internet. Young adults are the most highly connected age group in the United States, but that does not mean that their online uses are homogenous. Analyzing data about the Web uses of 270 randomly sampled adult Internet users from across the United States, the article explores the differences in 18-26-year-olds' Web uses and examines what social factors explain variation in amounts and types of uses. Findings suggest that those with higher socio-economic background use the Web for more "capital-enhancing" activities. Detailed analyses of user attributes also reveal that Internet skills play an important mediating factor in the types of activities people pursue online. We discuss the implications of these findings for a "second-level digital divide", that is, differences among the population of young adult Internet users.

Martin Heidenreich (University of Bamberg, Germnay)
E-Mail address: martin.heidenreich@sowi.uni-bamberg.de
The Renewal of Regional Capabilities: Cluster Policies in Germany

The innovativeness of a region depends on its ability to recombine technological, organizational and scientific capabilities. This recombination can be facilitated by cluster policies. These policies however cannot escape the dilemmas of regional innovation systems - dilemmas which reflect the contradictory challenges of openness and social closure, of path dependence and renewal. Taking the examples of an East and a West German region, the dilemmas of regional cluster policies are analyzed. On the one hand, Leipzig - one of the most successful East German urban regions - had to create a new economic and business structure; on the other hand, the existing firms had to be integrated into regional networks in order to enhance their innovative capabilities. These two challenges were met in Leipzig by separate, newly created institutions thus hampering the regional integration and innovativeness of the recently recreated industrial basis. The dilemma between the creation of new capabilities and the development of existing ones could also be observed in the Nuremberg region, but in this region the transformation of a traditional industrial region into a technology and service-based one was facilitated by a common vision, regional networks, new research facilities and favorable conditions for start-up activities. In this case, existing regional associations facilitated the integration of formerly isolated regional capabilities. This demonstrates the role of regional business associations for overcoming the dilemmas of regional innovation systems.

Seishi Kimura (Fukushima University, Japan)
E-Mail address: s.kimura.97@cantab.net
"Controlled" Learning of Suppliers in Global Value Chains

This paper analyses how lead firms of global value chains (GVCs) control suppliers' learning and growth process. Firstly, an analytical framework will be proposed to understand the different modes of control that the lead firms exert over the suppliers. Those modes of control include (1) control over quality, cost, and delivery; (2) control against opportunistic behaviours, and (3) control over learning dimensions. We will then elaborate the third mode of control through examining how and why the lead firms would control the learning process of suppliers. It will be argued that the lead firms try to control the suppliers' learning and in turn their growth process by carefully confining the outsourcing activities to non-strategic ones. In so doing, the lead firms try to limit the dimensions of the suppliers' learning-by-doing, and preclude suppliers from becoming a direct threat to their dominance in GVCs. Finally, based on our analytical framework, the short case study will illustrate how the Boeing has controlled the learning and growth process of its Japanese suppliers in the commercial aircraft GVCs.

Roger Krohn (McGill, Canada)
Research the Problem, Not By the Discipline

If we are in another conceptual crisis, perhaps the separation of our social sciences is to blame. To understand complex, rapid change, we need to include humans, culture, organization, & the earth. Accepting the transdisciplinary goal, we can contribute by integrating sociology, economics, political science, and history, according to the research problem, rather than our discipline. The increasing frequency, volatility, & global scale of business cycles & financial crises require shifts of frame, perspective, method, and moves toward 'science like behavior', as revealed in science studies. We need to 'bring the lessons home'. Classical economics has no specialty for business cycles; financial analysis, with less prestige, finds finer data, but, suffers 'the blind men and the elephant' problem. Cycles are institutional, social movements, and collective problems, which only sociologists study. Including social linguistics & etymology, we have also to push the analysis down to the meaning of abstract categories, such as 'market, 'capital', (central to economics), to political rhetoric, and to 'globalization' vs. 'empire'. Pace Mannheim, we still struggle with counter-concepts. Complex dynamics, & our being alive, require a life systems (ecological) theory. Finally, words and numbers are not enough; in complex dynamics, we need visual patterning to harness our most powerful perceptual-conceptual system.

Seweryn Krupnik (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
E-Mail address: seweryn_k@wp.pl
The Influence of Perceived Social Ties Between Sales Representative and Customer on Customer Buying Choices

The application of a Socio-economics has paved the way for a theory of social influence on customer decision while the customer is interacting with a sales representative. The hypothesis of the research was that a sales representative will gain more of consumer's surplus when he/she successfully presents himself/herself as a member of the customer's social group. When a sales representative is perceived as a friend (i.e. a member of the customer's social group), rather than purely as a salesman, it is more likely that normative - affective factors, described within Socio-Economics, will influence the customer's buying decisions. Possession of the following characteristics increase the possibility that a given sales representative will be perceived as a member of his/her customer's social group: · Adaptability to customer behavior, values and emotions; · Physical attractiveness; · Situational propriety; · Appropriate level of involvement; The knowledge about so depicted influence is part of the practical consciousness (to use Giddens' terminology) of sales representatives. Guidebooks for sales representatives and marketing literature were analyzed and interviews with sales representatives were conducted. The results of this study have significant theoretical implications and can help in the creation of a comprehensive theory of social influence on customer decision.

Matthias Kussin (University of Bielefeld, Germany)
E-Mail address: matthias.kussin@uni-bielefeld.de
Quantifying Operational Risks in Banking Supervision

In June 2004, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision passed the so called "Basel II" framework for "International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards" which implementation will imply several innovations in banking supervision in order to align regulatory capital to the underlying risks by encouraging better systematic risk management practices. This paper focuses on one of the most prominent aspects: the measurement and quantification of operational risks which originates from human error as well as from failure of information technology in the global banking system. With banking supervision including operational risks in the framework as a dominant factor for capital requirement, banking organizations are forced to develop new techniques of risk management. The first part describes the classical forms of risk, banking organizations are confronted with, referring to credit and market risks, followed by the illustration of operational risk management. In the second part, the text shows the specific techniques of measuring operational risks as typical phenomenon of representation and calculation in modern society and tries to identify analogies in other socio-economic fields. Finally, the third part discusses the perspectives and limits of quantifying operational risks and gives the prospects for forthcoming developments in the financial system.

Alice Lam (Brunel University, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: alice.lam@brunel.ac.uk
The Tacit Knowledge Problem in Multinationals

Drawing on the literature on organizational learning and knowledge creation, and the institutional perspective that stresses the socially embedded nature of knowledge, the paper examines how multinational firms seek to resolve one of the most difficult problems in knowledge creation and transfer -- the 'tacit' knowledge problem -- through the development of overseas 'knowledge incubators' and the creation of 'transnational social space' for learning. The empirical evidence is based on six in-depth case studies carried out in the R&D laboratories of Japanese and US multinational firms in Europe. The central aim of the study is to analyze how multinational firms, characterized by contrasting home-based models of learning and innovation adopt different approaches for solving the tacit knowledge problem and the dilemmas that they encounter in developing their 'transnational learning spaces'.

Jonathan Larson (University of Michigan, USA)
E-Mail address: jllarson@umich.edu
Ambiguous Transparency: Rewriting Facts and the Representation of Labor in the Slovak Curriculum Vitae

The curriculum vita is an instrument for translating an individual life history into the imagined terms of the employer. How might this linguistic genre also obfuscate the nature of circumscribed persons in the act of making them transparent? This paper explores how instruction in a Slovak workshop in how to write a Western CV contributes to the construction of new ideas of factuality and notions of equality. I apply anthropological tools including work on language ideologies and the pragmatics of semiosis and social events to unpack contradictions in a type of text implicated in postsocialist transformations in labor. The workshop that I analyze was conducted by a Slovak NGO in the summer of 2001 with technical assistance from the U.S. Peace Corps. In teaching how to write a CV, the instructor posits a meritocratic society in which individuals commodify themselves by discursively detaching themselves from existing social relations. This de-emphasis of the individual as a social being is part of creating a break with past socialist beliefs and practices. The reality that the neoliberal ideology of this workshop projects, however, is quite different than current conditions of the Slovak labor market.

Catharina Leilich (IAAEG, University of Trier, Germany)
E-Mail address: leilich@iaaeg.de
Flat or Steep Hierarchies in Research Institutes? - Empirical Findings for the Max-Planck-Institutes

Research institutes can have flat hierarchies with all researchers working directly with the director. Or they can have steep hierarchies with advanced researchers forming an "intermediate tier" between the director and the other researchers. When is such a steep hierarchy useful and are there cases where the coordinating function of advanced researchers is less important and a flat hierarchy is optimal? It is assumed that research institutes can be characterized by a specific production function determining the optimal organizational form. A model by Rajan/Zingales (1998) shows how different production functions influence the organization of knowledge-intensive companies. This model will be applied to research institutes and tested empirically. According to Rajan/Zingales the production function varies depending on how the researchers' abilities combine after their specialization. The factors "field of research", "multidisciplinarity" and "training of young researchers" are expected to be characteristics of an institute that can indicate which kind of production function applies and which organizational structure would therefore be optimal. Whether this theoretically derived relationship between these three characteristics of institutes and organizational form exists will be tested empirically. To this end, the 80 Max-Planck-Institutes are analyzed. First empirical results partially confirm the theoretical presumptions.

Christian Licoppe (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, France)
E-Mail address: christian.licoppe@enst.fr
The Interactional Turn in Integrated Management Systems (CRM, ERP, Workflow): Making Interactional Knowledge Calculable in Organizations

The communication focuses on a current trend in integrated management software (CRM, ERP, workflows, etc.). Previous information systems were integrated into socio-technical infrastructures that aimed to trace and calculate the productive and economic consequences of business processes. Integrated management software are getting more and more oriented today toward constructing a different kind of knowledge, that is making visible and calculable the many minute actions on which coordination thrives (including the "articulation work" they require) and the way they are performed in an orderly and sequential way. Therefore, they provide resources: - for combining interactional and accounting databases to make interactions a generic and category, independently of the economic consequences of a given interaction, . - for rendering visible and accountable the way customer interactions and business encounters unfold in time as sequential events. - for building "centers of calculation", leveraging such interactional data, in order to calculate and prescribe the way coordinations are to be performed, down to the proper delays between the accomplishment of their successive steps. This communication will aim to discuss such an "interactional turn" in integrated management software, with a focus on the management of customer interactions in the service industry (banking and telecom).

Maria Lucia Maciel (Universidade Federal Do Rio De Janeiro, Brazil)
E-Mail address: mlmaciel@centroin.com.br
Knowledge, Innovation and Local Development: Understanding Local Knowledge Flows

If knowledge is now a strategic factor for economic accumulation and for social development, we must try to understand specific social configurations of the mode of articulation of economic and intellectual factors of development. The capacity for technological and social innovation - presupposing the production and distribution of knowledge (a critique of the fallacy inherent to the idea of a generalized "knowledge society" is inevitable here) - is configured by social conditions existing in the cultural and institutional environment, more than by the availability of material resources. The immaterial changes which occur in the production of intangibles as well as in material production generate social change - thence the possibility of development. Building on a critique of current approaches which seek to quantify 'trust', 'social capital', 'collective efficiency' or 'collective intelligence' as resources or instruments, the emphasis here is on a relational approach. The issue of local development will be addressed from a methodological perspective based on on-going research which attempts to understand local knowledge flows in the social articulation of local systems of innovation.

Mita Marra (Italy's National Research Council, Italy)
E-Mail address: mita.marra@issm.cnr.it
Delegation, Knowledge Integration, and Cooperation: Is There A Missing Link?

European cohesion policies are increasingly relying on grassroots networks tapping into tacit knowledge and participatory decision-making processes. Regional governments delegate their decision making power to local institutions with the assumption that local agents possess both contextual tacit knowledge and political legitimacy to integrate different policy measures in a cooperative fashion. Delegation of decision making power is therefore presumed to minimize the unintended or conflicting outcomes emerging, for instance, when environmental protection and infrastructure building are not designed coherently to local contextual needs nor are these pursued through a cooperative effort of local networks of actors. Building upon a current field research in the South of Italy, this paper presents a number of cases of local collaborations in which large numbers of local actors representing a wide range of contending groups have, with the help of mediating institutions, worked out agreements for integrating development programs. These agreements include performance standards to which all parties have agreed to be bound. In some circumstances, they encourage consensus building offering all relevant groups the knowledge and skills needed to participate in these negotiations. In other circumstances, delegation of decision making power open the door for opportunistic participation, lacking vision and trust for mutual cooperation.

David Martin (Université Toulouse Le Mirail / CERTOP-CNRS, France)
E-Mail address: dmartin@univ-tlse2.fr
The New Calculative Speculation: Forecasting Volatility

This paper aims to grasp with a central cultural feature of calculative contemporary finance, concerning risk management based on financial derivatives. These - and more particularly "options" - have existed for a long time in many financial places but they are subject to a renewed practical success for about three decades. This success is usually linked to the development of whole a mathematical financial engineering. The better-known jewel among the theoretical models implemented on derivatives markets is that of Black & Scholes concerning the pricing of options, which assumes "volatility" (i.e. standard deviation of asset returns) to be an exogenous parameter. Then, the now supposedly computable price of derivatives is as a matter of fact dependant on the calculation of volatility. The latter appears to be a new key value for calibration and implementation of pricing models. In this paper we consider this cognitive and practical Copernican revolution of (both financial and theoretical) speculation that consists in focusing on the search for the "fair" volatility. Professional and academic research on "volatility forecasting" is here studied as a central corpus of speculative action, and supplemented with two kinds of empirical data: observation of real markets and regulatory practices, and interviews with actors.

Etienne Nouguez (University of Paris 10-Nanterre / IDHE, France)
E-Mail address: enouguez@u-paris10.fr
Measuring the Differences Between Two "Identical" Products: The Case of Generic Drugs in France

The mainstream economic theory generally assumes that the characteristics of the products are obvious for the consumer who can choose between any given product on the basis of prices and preferences. This simplistic presentation of product qualities is discussed by many researchers in socio-economics through the theme of measurement: How are qualities evaluated? What role do physical characteristics and price play in such an evaluation? These questions are particularly striking when the compared products are presented like identical in composition, as it is the case for the generic drugs in France. The French authorities legally defined the generic drug as identical in essence to the original drug but a myriad of small differences remain in its presentation. The consumers are assured that it is the same thing while it doesn't look like. What must they trust: the composition written on the box, their doctor, their own body? This question is all the more important as in the field of health self-realizing prophecies are numerous. In this paper, we would like to analyze how the actors on the health field discuss the best way of measuring economic and physical differences between generic drugs and original drugs.

Pedro F. Hernandez Ornelas (State University of Puebla, Mexico)
E-Mail address: pfhernan@prodigy.net.mx
On the Moral Bases of Socio-economics

This paper presents some important issues of an ongoing research project relative to the philosophical foundations of socio-economics, (as an existential experience and also as a valid concern of scientific thought), in as much as it can be properly defined by a double set of major ontological and epistemological parameters. They are, namely, first) the communitarian dimension of all economic endeavors and second) the ethical principles of ecological economics - an innovative thinking on the systemic relations of societies striving for sustainability in a process of cosmic development. The communitarian dimension of economics (defined and justified particularly by Heinrich Pesch, prominently among other recognized economists of our age, establishes the priority of the common good as the necessary basis of any personal good and welfare. On the other hand, the holistic consideration of the ethical foundations of ecological economics complements the theoretical and practical consideration of socio-economics as a way for better achieving the goals of any societal development in terms of its sustainability within the realms of human justice and effective care for all other planetary elements confirming man´s Umwelt.

Mika Pantzar (National Consumer Research Centre, Finland)
Petteri Repo (National Consumer Research Centre, Finland)
E-Mail address: petteri.repo@ncrc.fi
Powerpointing the 3G Future

From a business point of view, creating markets for new products is as important as is technical inventiveness. Forecasts and visual tools such as Microsoft PowerPoint are essential when new markets are outlined. However, their overuse can easily become counterproductive. The future is then convincingly presented as given without giving the opportunity for criticism. We call this the pathology of information society. This pathology became especially apparent in the forecasts on 3rd generation mobile communication in Europe in 2000. Professionals in the mobile industry knew of the weaknesses of the forecasts but they could not present their critique in public.

Mariano Plotkin (IDES/Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Argentina)
E-Mail address: marianoplotkin@hotmail.com
Intellectuals, Politics and State Elites: The Origins of Professional Economics in Argentina and Brazil

The paper will study the origins and early development of the fields of economics and of economists in two Latin American countries: Brazil and Argentina. Although a lot has been written recently on the role of economists in government in Latin America, most such works have taken a sociological approach. Virtually no effort has been made to understand historically how economics developed as a legitimate discipline, how economists became socially accepted specialists, and how all this relates to the development of the modernizing state and the role of intellectuals in peripheral contexts. This paper will address all these issues in a comparative perspective. Argentina a Brazil provide great grounds for comparison because both countries are at the same time very similar and very different. The two countries competed for hegemony in the southern cone, and particularly since the 1930 they went through roughly similar political systems. Nonetheless, the place that intellectuals occupied in each society has been very different. Although economics as a profession developed relatively earlier in Argentina (the school of economics was created in 1913 whereas in Brazil it happened only in the 1930), in Brazil economists consolidated as a state elite sooner than their Argentine counterparts.

Jocelyn Probert (Univeristy of Cambridge, United Kingdom)
Christel Lane (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: j.probert@cbr.cam.ac.uk; col21@cam.ac.uk
The External Sourcing of Technological Knowledge by US Pharmaceutical Companies: Strategic Goals and Inter-Organizational Relationships

This study of the organization of the discovery function by large US pharmaceutical companies (LPCs) seeks to place an important new strategy for knowledge acquisition - external sourcing in the context of reconfiguring the value chain. It focuses on the in-sourcing of knowledge in the form of both new compounds and discovery and development enabling technology. The paper additionally investigates the locational choices and any linkages between firms across national borders entailed by this new division of knowledge labour between firms. We thus aim to link the political economy/strategic management literature on global production networks with that on technological innovation. Against this background, we will analyze both the trend and current scale of external sourcing of knowledge and the networks of knowledge production established by US LPCs, in interaction with both biotechnology firms and public and private research laboratories. We will distinguish between different organizational forms adopted and the objectives connected with them. Above all, we assess the nature of the network relationships arising. The paper is particularly concerned to identify some of the tensions and contradictions in them and to indicate how these are leading to processes of change in knowledge sourcing. Our study of the discovery process in US companies is contextualized in two ways. The paper captures the impact of both important industry/technology dynamics and of distinctive social institutional constellations on their organizational configurations and locational choices. To pursue the above objectives, we draw on both extensive primary data and on information from various types of secondary sources. The former were gathered in 2003 and 2004 through in-depth interviews of high-level corporate executives, within or close to the R&D function, in most of the US LPCs, as well as some biotechnology firms. The secondary data are used to both sketch out the wider industry and institutional contexts and to provide an overview, in q uantitative terms, of the trends and current scale of external sourcing in relation to in-house discovery, as well as the costs and costs and benefits entailed in this process. Our own qualitative data are employed to distinguish between different managerial strategies of in-sourcing employed and to assess the nature and location of network relationships developed.

Ettore Ricciardi (London School of Economics, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: r.ettore@lse.ac.uk
Balanced Scorecard and its Information System: Performance Data Warehouse

Balanced Scorecard is a strategic management tool that has been proposed in 1992 by Robert Kaplan and David Norton. Its success is proved by the wide diffusion that has characterized it in the last decade. Basically, Balanced Scorecard represents a performance appraisal system that allows to have an overall vision of how a firm is running its business, because in the evaluation are taken into account the four relevant perspectives of a company: economic-financial; customer satisfaction; internal business processes; innovation and organizational learning. Obviously, in order to create an evaluation system based on many key performance indicators, it requires the availability of information about different areas and, therefore, with completely different contents. Furthermore, the information availability must be distributed along all the organization and being legible by all the members of the different firm's units and functions. Hence the necessity of an integrated Information Technology project that provides such sources. This paper offers a synthetic description of the Balanced Scorecard tool, its functioning and effectiveness, but mainly it intends to highlights the importance of a particular Information System dedicated, Performance Data Warehouse, and to describe how it supports the Balanced Scorecard on a long-term dynamic relationship.

Jose Ripoll (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
E-Mail address: jose.ripoll@ses.unige.ch
Education, Knowledge, Development

This paper turns around educational systems and institutions in developing countries. Underlying the analysis is the conviction that adequate and efficient educational systems and institutions are central to knowledge build up and, with it, to development, growth, social harmony and welfare. The basic question is whether existing educational patterns, particularly in the field of higher education, match or clash with basic cultural, social, economic features of the local societies in which they are embedded and whose progress they are meant to contribute. Are educational patterns subdued or otherwise contrived by local cultures and languages? - or are they modeled by and converge to those existing in highly developed countries - a process consistent with the dynamics of globalized markets and the interdependence of national economies, as well as new aspirations of the younger generations? In the countries of affluent North, however, educational institutions are strongly inter-related in one way or another with the structure of their societies and economies; a structure that less advanced countries are unlikely to share. A mismatch between resources and needs and other deleterious effects for the country as a whole may ensue. In any case, there seems to be a conflict between the local and the Westernized approaches (restricted in this analysis to selected African countries, where the conflict is more visible than elsewhere). A balance between local cultures and societies and a more open outlook to account for a higher globalized world has not yet been found - particularly as dearth of financial and human resources and of political thrust are not up to the necessary efforts.

Elizabeth Shove (University of Lancaster, United Kingdrom)
E-Mail address: e.shove@lancaster.ac.uk
Metering Everyday Life: Feedback, Feedforward and the Dynamics of Practice

Where do devices as diverse as the watch, the bathroom scales, the pedometer, the electric meter, the heart rate meter, the bank statement and the 'hedometer' belong with respect to the construction of societal problems and the reproduction of everyday life? We focus on two aspects. First, metering permits aggregation. As such it influences state-level concerns and informs the design and implementation of policy regarding national health, welfare and well-being. Second, metering technologies provide users with feedback on the outcomes and consequences of past practice. This is of some significance for what happens next and for what they do in the future. Metering is one amongst other forms of connective tissue that have the dual effect of a) linking individual-micro performances thereby generating images and knowledge of macro-societal performance at any one point in time whilst b) spanning between past, present and future. We are interested in both forms of connectivity. While we deal with different metering technologies, we concentrate on the personal monitoring of heart, stress and finance. Our aim is to show how metering and feedback - as institutionalized forms of memory are implicated in patterns of continuity and change.

Sabina Stan (Université de Montréal, Canada)
E-Mail address: stans@magellan.umontreal.ca
Transparency: Seeing, Counting and Experiencing the System

In the last decade, "transparency" has become one of the key terms of public policy prescriptions around the world. In supranational and national policy documents, transparency is understood in the terms of "access to information", more particularly to numerical data. In this respect, transparency points to processes of "seeing by numbers", i.e. using numbers for making visible the workings of (public service) systems. While policy prescriptions are imbued with these visualist and numerical objectivist stances, the "citizens", who are supposed to profit from transparency-driven measures, "see" and come to know the system in quite different terms, based in particular on the lived experience they have of the system. The post-communist transition in Eastern Europe offers fruitful terrain for studying contesting processes of accounting and representing public service systems. The paper will focus on the health care system, one of the most important and contested sectors of public intervention. Based on anthropological fieldwork in health care units in Romania, on interviews with public servants, and on analysis of official documents, the paper aims to confront official and "users" perspectives on seeing and knowing public service systems.

Jean-Baptiste Suquet (Ecole Polytechnique, France)
E-Mail address: Suquet.Jean-Baptiste@wanadoo.fr
How to Produce a Representation of Fraud in Urban Transportation? Between Statistics and Experience

The paper is based on a research that took place by a French urban transporter, in a Parisian suburb, about a well-known issue: fraud. We were expected to help increase knowledge about fraud and people committing fraud. The work focused on three opportunities to develop a new type of knowledge about fraud: statistics, field observations and interviews with people having committed fraud. It appeared that the results themselves were of interest, and suggested a great many ways to keep on improving knowledge on the subject. But the knowledge in itself was of little importance. What was important was the way it could be used and was used indeed by the organization, in a purpose of action on fraud. In this view, it appears knowledge can not be separated from action. The results, on one hand, were determined by the way organization conceived fraud, and on the other hand, they were selected according to the perspective of action on fraud the organization had. The results suggested a central place and role of knowledge in organization, especially when dealing with environmental issues.

Susan Leigh Star (Santa Clara University, USA)
Martha Lampland (University of California at San Diego, USA)
E-Mail address: slstar@scu.edu; mlampland@ucsd.edu
Formalizing Practices

We are conducting research investigating "formalizing practices." The term groups together three analytically distinct, but intimately related phenomena: standardization, quantification, and formal representation (s/q/f). Three different aspects of formalizing practices are central: 1) the genesis of a standard, protocol, or procedure, 2) eventual stabilization and virtual object-like quality of s/q/f, and 3) the curious slippage between e.g., an object or process being formalized, and how formalization itself occurs. We consider questions of scale, scope and degrees of delegation as crucial features of these processes. Our approach, strongly informed by work in Science Studies, differs from the notion of path dependency, as we hope to understand the social and cultural means by which s/q/f can be de-stabilizing, as much as the more commonly researched question of the irreversibility of standards or of infrastructural development. Our group has considered such diverse examples as labor practices in Stalinism, formal computer modeling of work, clinical trials, insurance protocols, and educational standards in California. Foci of the paper are: 1) analyzing the work involved in practices; 2) methodological / pedagogical: how to investigate these and teach about them; and 3) how this supplements market and coordination views.

Cecile van Hezik (ETHZ Zurich, Switzerland)
E-Mail address: cvanhezik@ethz.ch
A New Framework For Studying the Socio-economic Aspects of Renewable Energy Innovations in Cross-Country Comparisons

In innovation research the adoption and diffusion period have traditionally received most attention, however many problems arise after a technology has been adopted. For example without proper management of the technology, the innovation might still fail. The goal of the paper is to improve the understanding of the socio-economic elements related to the studying of the implementation of innovations. An alternative framework is proposed for socio-economic analysis. It looks at the embeddedness of a firm in a business, cultural and institutional environment. The framework is based on the network approach and stakeholder perspective and combines insights from sociology, institutional economics, management and organization theory, and cultural theory. The framework is applied to bioenergy utilization in Europe. The focus is on the period from the implementation phase onwards, after the innovation has become adopted. The relevant relationships between various stakeholders and the significant socio-economically and culturally influencing variables are presented.

Cecile van Hezik (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
Cuiping Liao (Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion)
John D. Liu (Environmental Media Project EEMP)
E-Mail address: cvanhezik@ethz.ch; liaocuiping@msn.com; johnliu@eempc.org
Filming As Scientific Tool to Perceive and Communicate the Unobservable

By using examples from socio-economic analysis in energy innovations carried out in Europe and China, we illustrate how socio-economic analysis can benefit from the use of film. Filmmaking can reveal what is usually unobservable, i.e. the values, norms, cultural differences, or awareness, in business and scientific environment. With 'unobservable' are meant those aspects which are neither perceived by the scientist, nor by the manager, but which do have an impact on renewable energy diffusion and implementation. What is actually the predominant paradigm that guides Chinese and European scientists and managers dealing with renewable energy? Is it more economic, environmental or social oriented? How does it affect the innovation process? These questions have not been well covered in scientific literature but seem crucial in socio-economic and innovation analysis as it is at the root of how different actors in society communicate (network approach), and how renewable energy is supported by different stakeholders e.g. managers, consumers, universities (institutional and innovation theory). We heavily focus on the role (and perhaps responsibility) of the scientist in socio-economic analysis and the role of the scientist as an observer and transmitter of the findings to the managers and other relevant stakeholders in a reciprocal process.

Mark Wilde (Brunel University, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: mark.wilde@brunel.ac.uk
Biotechnology and Traditional Farming Communities

This paper will examine the impact of biotechnology on traditional, conventional and organic farming methods and communities from a number of perspectives. There will be some background discussion of the ethical issues associated with the patentability of genetically modified plants and seeds. However, as the patentability of these products now seems to be a fait accompli (see Plant Genetic Systems T356/93), the focus of debate has shifted to the effect of the industry on exiting farming methods and on the communities themselves. The case of Monsanto v Schmeiser raises the possibility that, where contamination has occurred or seeds have been retained, intellectual property rights could be asserted against those who wish to pursue alternative (e.g. organic) and/or traditional methods and have no wish to be locked in to the GM farming system. Drawing upon international agreements (e.g. 1992 Biodiversity Convention), legislation and decisions principally at an EU and international level, this paper will consider the impact on traditional communities of the legal regulation and protection of genetically-modified farming.