Technology and Culture

396 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Organized Technology: Networks and Innovation in Technical Systems. By Wesley Shrum. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue Univesity Press, 1985. Pp. xvii + 274; notes, bibliography, index. $4.50 (paper). In Organized Technology, Wesley Shrum sets himselfthe task ofbring­ ing innovation into the study of technology. His objective is to steer between the traditional approaches—the historical analysis of inven­ tions with individuals as analytical units, and the study of firms’ be­ havior with the focus on the role of organization—by combining ele­ ments of the two, situating innovation in the contemporary context of “collectivized” science, and focusing on the system of innovation as a whole (p. 8). In an introductory chapter he describes three of the biggest and most successful large-scale technological systems, the Manhattan Proj­ ect, Polaris, and Apollo. Using these three he elaborates his main con­ cepts for the description of such programs—their systems character, size, diversity, and organizational and interorganizational features. It must be understood that his systems concept is a sociological one, defined as “a centrally administered network of actors (organizational as well as individual) oriented toward the achievement of a set of related technological objectives” (p. 15). He then chooses two cases which lend themselves to comparison because of their different “in­ terorganizational structures”: nuclear waste management and solar photovoltaic cells. Each represents a different use of technology, for collective and private values, respectively. While not a quality inherent to these technologies, their being “pri­ vate” or “public” is a result of political and economic factors which have shaped their historical development. This constellation provides the backdrop for the analysis of the interorganizational structure of the two systems. Although similar in many ways, they reveal distinct differ­ ences with respect to distribution of funds and their respective involve­ ment with the different sectors. R&D in photovoltaics shows a higher involvement of the private sector, while the nuclear waste program is characterized by a virtual monopoly of government funds and a domi­ nance of national laboratories. Part 2 of the book is devoted to the quantitative analysis (survey data, network analysis, and bibliographic search) of the consequences of these structural features, trying to determine whether the different interorganizational structures of the systems have any influence on the innovative process. Chapter 4 considers whether the different contex­ tual settings (public vs. private) have any influence on the researcher and the process of knowledge construction. As could be expected from the preceding Endings, the nuclear waste system was structured around a core of participants consisting largely of governmental ad­ ministrators and national laboratory researchers, while, in the photo­ voltaic system, relationships are not mediated by government, and linkages within research sectors are fairly uniform. These processes TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 397 and structures at the system and sectoral levels are then related to the performance of the individual. Shrum considers the most important Ending overall to be that there are two types of innovativeness in technical systems. In the nuclear waste system linkages with govern­ ment are associated with performance of researchers, while in the photovoltaics system the more traditional conceptions of performance based on peer evaluation prevail. The latter Ending, according to Shrum, shows that the unique fea­ tures of “industrialized science” are there but that they apply more to systems that rely on government than to those which involve private industry. The other conclusions he draws go in a different direction than I would have liked, as the author sees the relevance of his study mostly on the level of managerial and policy issues. Asjustified as that may be, this truly ambitious analysis deserves more theoretical ex­ ploitation of a sociological nature. For instance, the implications of a separate reputational system in governmental science and technology could have been pursued further, linking this study to previous, qual­ itative, historical accounts of the emergence of “hybrid communities” typically connected with government programs or technological sys­ tems in general. Although Shrum’s system concept is a justifiedly different one, it would also have been desirable to relate it to Thomas Hughes’s notion of systems, if only to avoid undue terminological confusion. For a sound empirical underpinning of many a speculation about...