Rethinking Political Process in Technological Change: Socio-technical Configurations and Frames

The political process perspective has done much to enhance our understanding of the organizational effects of technological change as a negotiated outcome reflecting the political and power dynamics of the adopting context. In so doing, we suggest, technology has been marginalized as an analytical category and the problem of change agency, although better understood, remains largely unresolved. This article addresses these issues through the articulation of the concepts of socio-technical configurations and technological frames and explores their utility in understanding change agency through an action research project. The project sought a novel form of 'socio-technology' transfer, taking ideas and concepts of 'human-centered' manufacturing embodied in team-based cellular manufacture from a European context into three firms in Australia.     

Postsocialist privatization and agency-related property: from Coase to Locke

Differing concepts of private property and the state (Hobbes, Locke, and Smith) are discussed on an abstract level as well as to their relevance regarding transition in the countries of Soviet socialism. This discussion provides arguments to support the following claim: to gain an adequate understanding of what privatization means in the context of Eastern European reforms, it is essential to use models of thought which (1) relate property rights to agency and production and (2) treat political, judicial, organizational and spontaneous processes of establishing and enforcing rights as endogenous elements of the analysis. This would imply that for an attempt to conceptualize ‘transition’ and ‘privatization’, traditional neoclassical analysis might be misleading: it treats private property rights (‘endowments’) as related to exchange only and holds that they exhibit no patterns which are relevant to the analysis of a market society. It treats them as exogenous and hence arbitrary.     

Region? Why Region? Security,Hermeneutics, and the Making of the Black Sea Region

In the context of post–Cold War European integration, ‘making’ regions has become commonplace. Far from reducing the significance of regional initiatives, inflationary regional labelling draws attention to the significant role played by ‘regions’ as legitimating political vectors. Why are political projects formulated in regional terms? Critically examining the Black Sea region project, this article suggests that region-making transcends the boundary between theoretical and political praxis. Regional entrepreneurs frequently use different conceptual categories in the formulation and justification of their initiatives. In order to understand why regional forms are preferred politically, it is necessary to scrutinise closely this contextual interaction between political praxis and conceptual logic. The article maps the various concepts of region which coexist in the Black Sea region project, and discusses their relationship with four political and hermeneutical strategies that link the regional project with its context, profoundly marked by the logic of European security integration. The ‘double hermeneutics’ of the Black Sea region highlights the contradictory security logics that structure European security in general and this regional project in particular. In the conclusion, the article draws attention to the significant epistemological and normative consequences of the double hermeneutics of the Black Sea region.     

Geosocial Lives in Topological Polis: Mohamed Bouazizi as a Political Agent

Geopolitical events and developments can hardly be detached from the mundane lives where people confront politicised and politicising matters, share meaningful experiences, build attitudes, and take action. To contribute to understanding how large-scale geopolitics connect with the everyday, this article draws attention to political subjectivity as the condition of possibility of political agency and polis as the geosocial context of political life as experienced, conceived, and practised. Empirically, the paper engages with the tragic end of Mohamed Bouazizi’s life and scrutinises his role in the events and developments generally known as the Arab Spring. Our analysis contests both the dominant interpretation that postulates political import to his acts, and the alternative account that underscores his apolitical stance. Instead, we propose that the international politicisation of Mohamed Bouazizi’s agency unfolded as an accomplishment of many individual and collective actors, including Bouazizi himself in his struggle to cope with emergent aspects of his everyday life.     

The Story-lines of Technological Change: Innovation, Construction and Appropriation

The paper contrasts three story-lines of technological change, which represent three different ways to think about technology as a social process. Each story-line, or discourse, or narrative strategy, has its own special terminology and is derived from particular academic fields and intellectual traditions. And each has different ways of considering the forms of social agency that are relevant in relation to technological change. For the story-line of innovation, the relevant agents are the producers of commercial products, often referred to as systems of innovation; for the story-line of construction, agency is conceptualized as those particular actors that have an interest in a particular artifact and its promulgation. For the story-line of appropriation, the social agency is differentiated into various user communities. When we analyze the relations between technology and society, it is important to know which kind of story we are telling and which story-line, or narrative strategy we are following.     

The Story-lines of Technological Change: Innovation,Construction and Appropriation

The paper contrasts three story-lines of technological change, which represent three different ways to think about technology as a social process. Each story-line, or discourse, or narrative strategy, has its own special terminology and is derived from particular academic fields and intellectual traditions. And each has different ways of considering the forms of social agency that are relevant in relation to technological change. For the story-line of innovation, the relevant agents are the producers of commercial products, often referred to as systems of innovation; for the story-line of construction, agency is conceptualized as those particular actors that have an interest in a particular artifact and its promulgation. For the story-line of appropriation, the social agency is differentiated into various user communities. When we analyze the relations between technology and society, it is important to know which kind of story we are telling and which story-line, or narrative strategy we are following.     

Biotechnology as a Technological Paradigm in the Global Knowledge Structure

This article offers a critique of the application of the concept 'technological paradigm', and associated concepts, to biotechnology. It argues that despite the attractiveness of Dosi's concept there are clear problems in applying it to technologies with a strong socio-political character. One set of problems lie with the limitations of the concept itself. A more profound problem is the complexity of biotechnology, extending to the controversies surrounding it, and its place in the global political economy. It is argued that there is a need to go beyond what is essentially an innovation economist's conceptualisation to engage a more socio-political context. The concerns of the field of international political economy are brought to bear on these issues to support an extension of the definition of technological paradigm as well as to re-assert a more widespread importance of the concept.     

Sociotechnical regimes,technological innovation and corporate sustainability: from principles to action

Increased environmental and social responsibility awareness, while producing unique opportunities for sustainability-oriented innovations, has generated important challenges for companies. The path to sustainability requires corporate strategies that guarantee profitability, managing simultaneously environmental and social responsibilities. An attempt is made to provide an understanding of sustainable development thinking in business, discussing how the combination of the transition management, adaptive planning and sociotechnical approaches can contribute towards an effective implementation of sustainability-oriented innovations in business context. The article proposes a conceptual model, which incorporates this contribution, developed through a four-year action-research project carried out within a large Brazilian energy company – Petrobras. The authors argue that the adoption of the proposed model by other large firms operating in different societal sectors might trigger organisational changes related to current corporate practices of technological innovation management.     

Evolution,complex systems and technological change 1

A particularly weak area of mainstream economics is its theoretical capacity to handle structural economic change. And yet the advent of major new technologies, combined with the growing integration of the international economic system, has placed structural change high on the policy agenda. This paper suggests an alternative theoretical approach. By portraying economic systems as complex open systems it is possible to view their long-term evolution in a more realistic way. However, in order to do this it is also necessary to borrow from other disciplines such as biology, physics and computer science where research of a similar genre has been carried out. The paper explores what this means for our understanding of many of the underlying concepts associated with technological change and ends with a programmatic plea to broaden the disciplinary bounds of economics.     

Against Decadence: The Work of Robert A. Brady (1901-63)

Research on institutional change has flourished ever since the debate on agency and structure has moved away from the previously uncompromising positions in which either agency or structure was emphasized. A conceptual compromise is sought here in a focus on the processes of institutionalization, which allows one to move beyond the idea that institutions are mere mental constructs or the point of view that behavior is the mere reproduction of institutional patterns. Contributing to an understanding of the processes of institutional change, this paper analyzes institutional change as instigated by tensions, triggered by agents’ discrepancies berween concrete institutional settings and the socio-economic values these are to represent. The Social Value Nexus that is presented introduces an emphasis on the perceived legitimacy of institutions. Describing (types of) tensions berween socio-cultural values and institutional settings, the paper explores how structure, agency and values interact in processes of institutional change.     

A Geopolitics of the Horse in Finland

The disregard of animal subjectivity in geopolitics is challenged as outdated and arrogant in light of the growing interdisciplinary understanding of the relational, dispersed, and co-evolving nature of agency. First, the war horse is examined by joining the instrumental approach of military history with the emphasis on emotion in animal studies. Knowledge about animal subjectivity is expanded by demonstrating how the horse itself has co-produced the Finnish experience in World War II and the national narrative about this conflict. Calculable territory, biopolitical state intervention, the political ecology of war, affect, and the body build connections between the horse’s war and theory, methodology, and concepts in political geography and geopolitics. Equine labour and response to the state’s geopolitically motivated breeding exercises during peace then bridge animal studies and critical geopolitics, showing how the horse has supported the formation of Finnishness. Finally, a look at contemporary mobility, geopolitics of disease, and biometric bordering exemplifies how the horse continues to adapt to new roles in Finnish society and contribute to human institutions and governance. The examination demonstrates the importance of other-than-human beings in the making of Finland as a political space and place. Suggestions for further studies and data point to opportunity. The article serves those who question rigid categorisations and segmentation of research and pedagogy into intellectually self-contained islands.     

技术资本：概念辨析、知识结构与分析框架

技术资本是一种新型、独立的资本形态，是技术加速转化为生产力并创造更多价值的重要途径，对加快数字经济发展具有重要意义。在回顾国内外相关研究的基础上，首先拓展技术资本的概念内涵，明确其价值增值的目标属性；然后，运用知识图谱分析方法对技术资本研究的知识结构进行可视化分析，发现现有研究主要形成技术视角、资本视角和技术资本化过程的3种进路；随后，进一步构建一个整合式分析框架，从驱动因素、生成机制、作用机理和影响效果4个方面建立全局性视角，以把握技术资本研究情况；最后，从完善测量方法，探析技术资本与数字经济、数字技术关联等方面提出可行的研究方向。结论有助于阶段性厘清国内外技术资本研究进展，为未来更深入的分析提供参考。     

Redefining Europe: Russia and the 2015 Refugee Crisis

ABSTRACT

This article uses approaches embedded in practical and popular geopolitics for analysing how Russia capitalizes on the refugee crisis to redefine Europe. Two of Russia’s European policies are at the centre of this analysis: 1) Moscow’s direct appeal to Russian-speaking communities, and 2) the Kremlin’s liaisons with Eurosceptic parties of national conservative background. The main questions these two policies raise are: 1) how Russia benefits from anti-refugee attitudes among European national conservative groups, and 2) how illustrative Russia’s policies are of Moscow’s strategy toward Europe in the context of the refugee crisis. The article argues that, for Russia, these two policies constitute a strategy of re-entry into Europe from which Moscow was increasingly isolated in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea in 2014. In this context, the authors claim that the refugee crisis has widened room for Russia’s return to the European (geo)political scene through a strategy of redefining Europe in more conservative and traditionalist terms, as opposed to the liberal cosmopolitanism of EU’s project. Using the concepts of trans-ideology and biopolitics, the article claims that Russia’s strategy of re-entry includes narratives of othering today’s Orientalized Europe and salvaging it from liberal tolerance, political correctness and cultural fragmentation.     

Context matters: How existing sectors and competing technologies affect the prospects of the Swiss Bio-SNG innovation system

Emerging technological fields are affected by developments in their broader context. This article proposes a differentiation of context structures as a crucial step in the analysis of technological innovation systems. A thorough context analysis, so the argument, is essential for understanding the pace and direction of technology development and the prospects of an emerging technological innovation system. Empirical insights are provided for Bio-SNG, a technology in an early stage of development. The article discusses the conditions under which actors from different sectors (forestry, wood industry, and energy supply) may play a role in the emerging field. It is shown that Bio-SNG is likely to become a victim of the recent boom in wood-to-energy technologies that has favored investments in more mature but technologically inferior alternatives. The case provides lessons for policy making as it highlights how effective support schemes might foster a lock-in into technologies that are readily available.     

A Cartography of the Unknowable: Technology,Territory and Subterranean Agencies in Israel’s Management of the Gaza Tunnels

ABSTRACT

This article evaluates the potential for agency exercised by the subterranean volume in geopolitical conflict. Joining recent geographical conceptualisations of territory as a volumetric assemblage with calls for an elemental geopolitics, it argues that the density of the underground layer creates a convoluted techno-political problem that obfuscates the state’s means of directly observing, visualising and knowing the topological space of territory. To illustrate this, a methodological approach based on the relational ontologies of actor-network-theory (ANT) and assemblage theory is applied to an empirical study of the geophysical sensing techniques used by Israeli engineers, scientists and military to manage cross-border tunnels built by the Palestinian militant group Hamas before and after the 2014 Gaza war. The soil conditions, settlement patterns and infrastructures in the Gaza-Western Negev region have necessitated experimentation with complex and multiple forms of scientific and political expertise in attempts to locate the invisible tunnels, alongside a shift towards increasingly oblique techniques of cartographic representation of the sub-surface. The contingency of these efforts has unsettled the State of Israel’s confidence in its ability to manage geopolitical risks through techniques of territorial control. This case raises poignant questions about the extent of the capacities and limitations of technological solutions and geopolitical practices to secure territory when confronted with the geophysical agency of the underground.     

Breaking Up Old Marriages: The Political Process of Change and Continuity at Work

This article contends that political processes are essential dynamics in creating continuity and change in organizations. A central aim is to inform the debate on change in organizations by conceptualizing and exploring the interplay between actors' political rationales, organizational culture, and new management concepts. Attention is given to the introduction of technical-bureaucratic management concepts for Occupational Health and Safety and the environment through presenting a case study, where both managers' and shop-floor personnel's political behaviour can be examined. The findings illustrate how continuity rather than change often prevails through the existence of more stabilized patterns of politics. The establishment of shared systems of meaning, conceived as the social constitution of the company, is shown to be a central mechanism for the regulation of politics, explaining the selectivity of politics regarding issues, arenas, arguments and actors. In particular, the relative importance of shop-floor personnel's politicking is discussed, and it is shown how their way of politicking differs from the forms found in management. Consequently it is suggested, that studies of political processes, which seek to encompass these forms of politics would benefit from the insights gained in cultural studies.     

Political connections and labor investment efficiency: Evidence from China's private firms

This study investigates whether political connections affect labor investment efficiency. We test this question in the context of China's private firms, where we find that political connections are negatively associated with labor investment efficiency. We also explore the channels through which political connections reduce labor investment efficiency and provide evidence that political connections aggravate both agency problems and information asymmetry. Further tests show that the influence of political connections is more pronounced for firms with overinvestment problems or high-level political connections, and for firms from regions facing severe unemployment or loose anticorruption. Overall, our results are consistent with the “grabbing hand” argument that politicians destroy firm operational efficiency.     

政府控制层级、CEO政治关联与代理成本:来自国有发电上市公司经验证据

笔者以国有发电公司为样本,采用Heckman两阶段回归方法,实证研究了CEO政治关联对代理成本的影响。结果显示,CEO政治关联会显著增大代理成本。其中,央企CEO政治关联会显著增大隐性代理成本,而地方国企CEO政治关联会显著增大显性和隐性代理成本,且其对代理成本的增幅明显大于央企,说明国企普遍存在的CEO政治关联加重了代理问题。     

Imagining the European Economy: 'Competitiveness' and the Social Construction of 'Europe' as an Economic Space

This article analyses the political and ideological agency of an emergent European transnational capitalist class in the socioeconomic governance of the European Union (EU) by examining the case of the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT). It seeks to show that the ERT‐as an elite forum mediating the interests and power of the most transnationalise d segments of European capital‐has played a significant role in shaping European governance in as much as it has successfully articulated and promoted ideas and concepts thathave at critical times set the political agenda and, beyond, have helped to shape the discourse within which European policy making is embedded. Here, the increasingly neoliberal orientation of the ERT reflects, and at the same time is a constitutive element within, the construction of a new European order in which governance is geared to serve the interests of a globalising transnational capitalist elite, and hence the exigencies of global 'competitiveness'. Although in recent years some detailed work has been done on the role of the ERT in the internal market programme, there has as yet been little attention paid to (and thus interpretation of) the content of the ideas promoted by the ERT and hence to the ideological power that this forum of transnational capitalists exercises. The article is divided into four main parts. The first briefly elaborates the theoretical framework that informs my analysis. Drawing upon what has come to be labelled the 'neo-Gramscian school' in International Relations (IR), I willadvance a historical materialist understanding of the dynamics of European integration, emphasising in particular the role of transnational social forces‐as engendered by the capitalist production process‐in the political and ideological struggles over European order. The second part introduces the case of the European Round Table. I will claim that the ERT is neither a simple business lobby nor a corporatist interest association, but must rather be interpreted as having developed into an elite platform for an emergent European transnational capitalist class from which it can formulate a common strategy and‐on the basis of that strategy‐seek to shape European socioeconomic governance through its privileged access to the European institutions. It is this latter role of the ERT that will be the focus of the final two parts. As such, the third presents an analysis of the evolution of ERT's strategic project and the initiating role the Round Table played in the relaunching of the integration process from Europe 1992 to Maastricht. Following this, the fourth part will analyse the ideological orientation and strategic outlook of today's Round Table and its current role in shaping what I will call the neoliberal discourse of competitiveness which, I argue, increasingly underpins European governance.