Abstract
This study combines insights from economic sociology on recent structural changes in the knowledge economy with neoinstitutionalist analyses of cultural change in organizations. Because a network form of organization relies on interorganizational ties, new models of legitimacy emerge alongside of old ones, rather than replacing them, so that seemingly contradictory institutions coexist in the network form. This article explores how life scientists legitimate working in the biotechnology industry—a new option that nevertheless fails to delegitimate the old academic path. The data are based on qualitative observations of a young biotechnology firm. These are supplemented by observations at a university laboratory and interviews with 41 life scientists.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Armstrong, Elizabeth A. 2002Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 1950–1994. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Barley, Stephen R., and Gideon Kunda 2001“Bringing work back in.” Organization Science 12:76–95.
Baum, Joel A. C., Tony Calabrese, and Brian S. Silverman 2000“Don’t go it alone: Alliance network composition and startups’ performance in Canadian biotechnology.” Strategic Management Journal 21:267–294.
Becker, Howard S., and James Carper 1956“The elements of identification with an occupation.” American Sociological Review 21:341–348.
Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann 1966The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Doubleday.
Caplow, Theodore, and Reece J. McGee 1961The Academic Marketplace. New York: Wiley.
Clarke, Adele, and Elihu Gerson 1990“Symbolic interactionism in social studies of science.” In H. Becker and M. McCall (eds.), Symbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies: 179–214. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Clemens, Elisabeth S. 1997The People’s Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890–1925. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2002“Invention, innovation, proliferation: Explaining organizational genesis and change.” Research in the Sociology of Organizations 19:397–411.
Clemens, Elisabeth S., and James M. Cook 1999“Politics and institutionalism: Explaining durability and change.” Annual Review of Sociology 25:441–466.
Davis, Gerald F., Kristina A. Diekmann, and Catherine H. Tinsley 1994“The decline and fall of the conglomerate firm in the 1980s: The deinstitutionalization of an organizational form.” American Sociological Review 59:547–570.
DiMaggio, Paul J. 1991“Constructing an organizational field as a professional project: U.S. art A1 museums, 1920–1940.” In Walter W. Powell, and Paul J. DiMaggio (eds.) Powell, and DiMaggio, The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis: 267–292. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dubinskas, Frank A. 1988“Janus organizations: Scientists and managers in genetic engineering firms.” In F. A. Dubinskas (ed.), Making Time: Ethnographies of High-Technology Organizations: 170–232. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Faulkner, Robert R., and Andy B. Anderson 1987“Short-term projects and emergent careers: Evidence from Hollywood.” American Journal of Sociology 92:879–909.
Fox, Mary Frank, and Paula E. Stephan 2001“Careers of young scientists: Preferences, prospects and realities by gender and field.” Social Studies of Science 31:109–122.
Freeman, Richard, Eric Weinstein, Elizabeth Marincola, Janet Rosenbaum, and Frank Solomon 2001“Competition and careers in biosciences.” Science 5550:2293–2294.
Giddens, Anthony 1984The Constitution of Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Goffman, Erving 1974Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gouldner, Alvin 1954Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy. New York: Free Press.
Granovetter, Mark 1995Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers, 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hackett, Edward J. 1990“Science as a vocation in the 1990s: The changing organizational culture of academic science.” Journal of Higher Education 61:241– 279.
Haveman, Heather A., and Hayagreeva Rao 1997“Structuring a theory of moral sentiments: Institutional and organizational coevolution in the early thrift industry.” American Journal of Sociology 102:1606– 1651.
Hoffman, Andrew J. 1997From Heresy to Dogma: An Institutional History of Corporate Environmentalism. San Francisco: New Lexington Press.
Howard-Grenville, Jennifer A. 2002“Institutional evolution: The case of the semiconductor industry voluntary PFC emissions reduction agreements.” In A. J. Hoffman, and M. J. Ventresca (eds.), Organizations, Policy, and the Natural Environment: Institutional and Strategic Perspectives: 291–308. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Jepperson, Ronald L. 1991“Institutions, institutional effects, and institutionalism.” In Walter W. Powell, and Paul J. DiMaggio (eds.), The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis: 143–163. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kenney, Martin 1986Biotechnology: The University-Industrial Complex. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Kleinman, Daniel Lee 1998“Untangling context: Understanding a university laboratory in the commercial world.” Science, Technology, and Human Values 23:285–314.
Kleinman, Daniel L., and Steven P. Vallas 2001“Science, capitalism, and the rise of the ‘knowledge worker’: The changing structure of knowledge production in the United States.” Theory and Society 30:451–492.
Leicht, Kevin T., and Mary L. Fennell 1997“The changing organizational context of professional work.” Annual Review of Sociology 23:215–231.
Lounsbury, Michael 2002“Institutional transformation and status mobility: The professionalization of the field of finance.” Academy of Management Journal 45:255–266.
Lounsbury, Michael, and Mary Ann Glynn 2001“Cultural entrepreneurship: Stories, legitimacy, and the acquisition of resources.” Strategic Management Journal 22:545–564.
Lounsbury, Michael, and Marc J. Ventresca (eds.) 2002Social Structure and Organizations Revisited: Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 19. Oxford, UK: JAI.
Lounsbury, Michael, Marc Ventresca, and Paul M. Hirsch 2003“Social movements, field frames and industry emergence: A cultural-political perspective on U.S. recycling.” Socio-Economic Review 1:71–104.
Meyer, John W., and Brian Rowan 1977“Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony.” American Journal of Sociology 83:340–363.
National Research Council 1998Trends in the Early Careers of Life Scientists. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Owen-Smith, Jason, and Walter W. Powell 2001“Careers and contradictions: Faculty responses to the transformation of knowledge and its uses in the life sciences.” Research in the Sociology of Work 10:109–140.
Padgett, John F., and Christopher K. Ansell 1993“Robust action and the rise of the Medici, 1400–1434.” American Journal of Sociology 98:1259– 1319.
Podolny, Joel M. 2001“Networks as the pipes and prisms of the market.” American Journal of Sociology 107:33–60.
Podolny, Joel M., and Karen L. Page 1998“Network forms of organization.” Annual Review of Sociology 24:57–76.
Powell, Walter W. 1990“Neither market nor hierarchy: Network forms of organization.” Research in Organizational Behavior 12:295–336.
Powell, Walter W., and Paul J. DiMaggio (eds.) 1991The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Powell, Walter W., Kenneth W. Koput, and Laurel Smith-Doerr 1996“Interorganizational collaboration and the locus of innovation: Networks of learning in biotechnology.” Administrative Science Quarterly 41:116–145.
Rabinow, Paul 1996Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rao, Hayagreeva, Calvin Morrill, and Mayer N. Zald 2000“Power plays: Social movements, collective action, and new organizational forms.” Research in Organizational Behavior 22:237–281.
Rayman, Paula M. 2001Beyond the Bottom Line: The Search for Dignity at Work. New York: Palgrave.
Regets, Mark C. 1997“What’s happening in the labor market for recent science and engineering PhD recipients?” Issue Brief 97–321. Arlington, VA: U.S. National Science Foundation.
1998“Has the use of postdocs changed?” Issue Brief 99–310. Arlington, VA: U.S. National Science Foundation.
Robbins-Roth, Cynthia 1998“A scientist gone bad: Or how I went from the bench to the board room.” In C. Robbins-Roth (ed.), Alternative Careers in Science: Leaving the Ivory Tower: 1–10. San Diego: Academic Press.
2000From Alchemy to IPO: The Business of Biotechnology. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.
Scott, W. Richard 2001Institutions and Organizations, 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Scott, W. Richard, Martin Ruef, Peter J. Mendel, and Carol A. Caronna 2000Institutional Change and Healthcare Organizations: From Professional Dominance to Managed Care. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Smith-Doerr, Laurel 2004“Flexibility and fairness: Effects of the network form of organization on gender equity in life science careers.” Sociological Perspectives 47:25–54.
Smith-Doerr, Laurel, and Walter W. Powell 2005“Networks in economic life.” In Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg (eds.), The Handbook of Economic Sociology, 2nd edn. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press and Russell Sage Foundation.
Stark, David 2001“Ambiguous assets for uncertain environments: Heterarchy in postsocialist firms.” In P. DiMaggio (ed.), The Twenty-First-Century Firm: Changing Economic Organization in International Perspective: 69–104. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1959“Bureaucratic and craft administration of production: A comparative study.” Administrative Science Quarterly 4:168–187.
1965“Social structure and organizations.” In J. G. March (ed.), Handbook of Organizations: 142–93. New York: RandMcNally.
Thornton, Patricia H., and William Ocasio 1999“Institutional logics and the historical contingency of power in organizations: Executive succession in the higher education publishing industry, 1958–1990.” American Journal of Sociology 105:801–843.
Weick, Karl E. 1995Sensemaking in Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Werth, Barry 1994The Billion-Dollar Molecule: One Company’s Quest for the Perfect Drug. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Zucker, Lynne G., Michael R. Darby, and Marilynn B. Brewer 1998“Intellectual capital and the birth of U.S. biotechnology enterprises.” American Economic Review 88:290–306.
Zucker, Lynne G., Michael R. Darby, and Maximo Torero 2002“Labor mobility from academe to commerce.” Journal of Labor Economics 20:629–660.
Zuckerman, Ezra W. 2000“Focusing the corporate product: Securities analysts and dediversification.” Administrative Science Quarterly 45:591–620.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Smith-Doerr, L. Institutionalizing the Network Form: How Life Scientists Legitimate Work in the Biotechnology Industry. Sociol Forum 20, 271–299 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11206-005-4101-7
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11206-005-4101-7