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The Organization of Technology in Advanced Industrial Society: A Hypothesis onTechnical Systems
Wesley Shrum; Robert Wuthnow; James Beniger
Social Forces
, Vol. 64, No. 1. (Sep., 1985), pp. 46-63.
Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-7732%28198509%2964%3A1%3C46%3ATOOTIA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W
Social Forces
is currently published by University of North Carolina Press.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/uncpress.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgThu Jul 5 00:03:03 2007
 
The Organization of Technology in AdvancedIndustrial Society: A Hypothesis on TechnicalSvstems*
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Louisiana State University
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Princeton University
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Princeton University
AbstractTechnical systems-large-scale, centrally coordinated technological enterprises-have emerged as a new mode of technological organization in advanced industrialsocieties. Recent scholarship points to the existence of two prima
y
types of systembased on whether the technology under development involves "collective" or "pri-~ate"~oods.t is hypothesized that these types differ in network structure and inthe determinants of technical innovation.
A
pattern of administrative hegemonyshould characterize technical systems which are organized to provide collectivegoods. Data from a national survey of
297
individuals involved in nuclear wasteand solar cell research provide support for the hypothesis. One implication is thatan exchange of resources for targeted contributions may be a more realistic modelof research behavior in some technical systems than the exchange of productivityfor recognition.
Research on the social organization of science and technology has fo-cused heavily on the role of informal communication. Studies of "basicscience" in scientific specialties emphasize the importance of informal sci-entific communities or "invisible colleges" in communicating, evaluating,rewarding, and stimulating research productivity (e.g., Crane; Mulkay etal.) while studies of "applied science" suggest that informal communica-tion plays a vital role in transmitting the information needed to solvespecific technical problems (e.g., Allen). Hence, the study of informal
*This research was conducted under a grant (PRA-7920573) from the National Science Foun-dation's Program on Innovation Processes, "Networks of Scientific and Technological Infor-mation Exchange in the Technical Innovation Process." Robert Wuthnow, Principal Investiga-tor. We thank Patricia Woolf, Laura Schrager, Cathy Leeco, and Karen Cerulo for theirinvaluable assistance. Address correspondence to wesley Shrum, Department of Sociology,Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803.
0
1985
The University of North Carolina Press
46
 
Technical Systems
l
47
communication networks has become a well-established tradition in thesociology of science. Indeed, tightly knit basic science specialty areasbound together by professional communication have been the key focus ofthis literature.But it is also increasingly evident that science consists of more thansmall-scale specialties and informal networks. The advent of "Big Sci-ence," as it has been called, introduces large-scale public and private fund-ing, government directives and regulations, and semi-autonomous corpo-rate organizations into the research process. For any particular technicalproblem, scores of organizations are now likely to be involved to onedegree or another, including some combination of universities, privatefirms, government labs, and funding or regulatory agencies-all of whichrequire coordination for the research task to be accomplished. This level ofscientific organization has received surprisingly little empirical attention inthe sociological literature.The term "technical system" can be employed to describe theselarge-scale research constellations.' The defining features of technical sys-tems include:
(1)
a goal-oriented emphasis on the production of scientificinformation relevant to the resolution of a broad technical problem of so-cial concern (e.g., atmospheric pollution, heart disease, fuel shortages,waste disposal);
(2)
direct involvement of the state in coordinating re-search activities concerned with the production of this information;
(3)
research activity from a relatively large number of actors, as comparedwith the number typically involved in a single scientific specialty (usuallythousands rather than hundreds); and
(4)
contributions from sectorallydiverse organizations (e.g., public, private) and from various occupations(scientists, engineers, administrators) as well as diverse scientific disci-plines or specialties. While historic analogs to technical systems exist (e.g.,geologic expeditions, canal construction projects), the increased role oftechnology in contemporary society, together with the increasingly di-rected effort to link research with technological goals, makes the presenceof technical systems more prominent now than ever before. Clearly, tech-nical systems represent a level of social organization distinct from thescientific specialty or the formally organized research firm, a macro levelof scientific organization.The fact that technical systems involve actors from a number ofdiverse organizations, cutting across both bureaucratic and disciplinaryboundaries, implies that mechanisms of coordination and control are es-sential to the success of these systems. Informal communications net-works are by no means irrelevant to the functioning of such systems, butthe manner in which these networks function remains little understood.Only recently have network studies begun to focus on larger systemsof organizations of any kind rather than on small communities of indi-viduals, and virtually none of this work to date has focused on scientific
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