+++ Apologies for cross-posting +++
FINAL CALL; we have got two sessions already, but would like to extend to three/four
Please submit your abstract (max. 250 words) to Huiwen Gong [log in to unmask], Christian Binz [log in to unmask], Robert Hassink [log in to unmask] and Michaela Trippl [log in to unmask] by Wednesday 5th November.
We will notify authors by Friday November 7th.
Final Call for Papers
Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Washington, D.C., April 3-7, 2019
Emerging industries: Institutions, legitimacy and system building
Session Organizers: Huiwen Gong (Kiel University), Christian Binz (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology), Robert Hassink (Kiel University), Michaela Trippl (University of Vienna)
In recent decades, the emergence of internet-related, biotechnology-based and ‘green’ industries has catalyzed significant economic development in regions, nations and globally. Accordingly, ‘emerging’, ‘embryonic’ and ‘nascent’ industries, as well as the dynamics of industrial path creation in regions (Fornahl et al., 2012; Grillitsch et al. 2017; Hassink et al. 2018; MacKinnon et al. 2018), have received renewed interest in research and policy making (e.g., Tödtling and Trippl 2018; Forbes and Kirsch, 2011; Binz et al., 2016b; Gustafsson et al., 2016; Carvalho and Vale, 2018; York and Lenox, 2014). Economic geographers have studied emerging industries have from multiple perspectives, four of which stand out: evolutionary approaches (path dependence, path creation, regional branching etc.), institutional theory (bricolage, institutional entrepreneurship, legitimacy etc.), organizational ecology (Gustafsson et al., 2016), as well as (regional and technological) innovation systems.
While these approaches have contributed complementary insights into the mechanisms of new industry emergence, a range of significant questions remain unanswered, particularly concerning the institutional contexts in which new industries form. Newly emerging industries like car sharing, renewable energy or personalized medicine fundamentally challenge taken-for granted regulations, norms, and cultural beliefs. As such, their emergence and diffusion depends not only on ‘supply-side’ knowledge dynamics (which are traditionally the focus of economic geographers), but also on structural shifts in the relevant valuation systems and institutional structures. Whether new industries emerge, directly depends on how early entrepreneurs are able to alter incumbent institutional structures through collective institutional entrepreneurship/work, legitimation or system building activities.
At the same time, economic globalization increasingly interconnects industry actors and institutional structures in distant places. Most emerging industries are not only confronted with institutional barriers at one particular spatial scale (e.g. inside one city or region) anymore, but depend on highly complex, multi-scalar institutional arrangements that may facilitate or hinder the emergence of new technologies and practices. Where, how and at what scale early entrepreneurs may best intervene in these multi-scalar arrangements is a largely open research question.
Moreover, whilst recent scholars, informed by institutional theories in other disciplines, have started to pay increasing attention to the role of agency in institutional dynamics, such as institutional entrepreneurship (Sotarauta and Mustikkamäki, 2015), and multi-actor legitimacy building (Bergek et al., 2008; Geels and Verhees, 2011), for emerging technologies and nascent industries, fundamental issues such as the institutional logics behind such agencies, and the interplay between materiality and legitimacy dynamics in space, remain poorly understood.
This session therefore aims at bringing together scholars who analyze the emergence of new industries from an institutional perspective and at several spatial scales (regional, national, global). We welcome conceptual, methodological and empirical papers that examine the topics of multi-scalar institutional agencies, institutional entrepreneurship, as well as legitimation and valuation dynamics, which are relevant for the emergence of new industries. We see particular potential in tackling the following questions:
n What multi-scalar institutional arrangements hinder or support the creation of new industrial paths in a given region/country? Why do new industrial paths succeed in certain institutional contexts while they fail in others? (Coenen et al., 2012; Hansen and Coenen, 2015)
n In nascent sectors, what kinds of institutional work are necessary in order to create, maintain and disrupt the institutional arrangements that the emerging industries are embedded in? (Fuenfschilling and Truffer, 2016; Hampel et al., 2017; Lawrence et al., 2013)
n How is legitimacy for emerging industries built up (e.g., artificial intelligence, biotechnology, biogenetics, and driverless vehicles) in regions/nations/ internationally? How do institutional actors react to sudden shocks or erosion of accumulated legitimacy? (Markard et al., 2016) How do institutions co-evolve with an emerging industry’s development trajectory? (Gong and Hassink, 2018)
n What are incumbent’s strategies to de-legitimize emerging (and potentially disruptive) competitors?
n How do legitimation processes differ between types of regions and between industries with varying technology characteristics? (Binz and Truffer, 2017; Huenteler et al., 2016; Isaksen and Trippl, 2016)
n What roles do (institutional) entrepreneurs and firms, policy-makers, end-users, and various intermediary actors play in (de-)legitimizing the emerging industries? (Binz et al. 2016a)
n How do the emerging industries differ from the established ones in terms of institutional logics? (Thornton et al., 2012; Gawer and Phillips, 2013) How do the coexistence, conflicts, and convergence of diverse institutional logics contribute to the development dynamics of the emerging industries? (Seo and Creed, 2002; Gawer and Phillips, 2013)
n How does the emergence of new technologies and materiality influence the institutional work of relevant stakeholders at several spatial scales? What are the preconditions for the interpretation/sense-making of emerging industries and how do they differ from place to place? (Raviola and Norbäck, 2013; De Vaujany, 2018)
n What are the common institutional obstacles that regional/national policy-makers come across in supporting an emerging industry? And how to overcome them?
References:
Bergek, A., Hekkert, M., Jacobsson, S., Markard, J., Sandén, B., & Truffer, B. (2015). Technological innovation systems in contexts: Conceptualizing contextual structures and interaction dynamics. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 16, 51-64.
Binz, C., Harris-Lovett, S., Kiparsky, M., Sedlak, D. L., and Truffer, B. (2016a) The thorny road to technology legitimation—Institutional work for potable water reuse in California, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 103: 249-263.
Binz, C., Truffer, B., and Coenen, L. (2016b) Path creation as a process of resource alignment and anchoring: Industry formation for on-site water recycling in Beijing, Economic Geography, 92: 172-200.
Binz, C., Truffer, B., 2017. Global Innovation Systems—A conceptual framework for innovation dynamics in transnational contexts. Research Policy 64 (7), 1284-1298.
Carvalho, L., Vale, M., 2018. Biotech by bricolage? Agency, institutional relatedness and new path development in peripheral regions. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 11 (2), 275-295.
Coenen, L., Benneworth, P., Truffer, B., 2012. Toward a spatial perspective on sustainability transitions. Research Policy 41 (6), 968-979.
De Vaujany, F. X. (2018). Legitimation process in organizations and organizing: An ontological discussion.
Forbes, D. P. and Kirsch, D. A. (2011) The study of emerging industries: Recognizing and responding to some central problems, Journal of Business Venturing, 26: 589-602.
Fornahl, D., Hassink, R., Klaerding, C., Mossig, I., and Schröder, H. (2012) From the old path of shipbuilding onto the new path of offshore wind energy? The case of northern Germany, European Planning Studies, 20: 835-855.
Fuenfschilling, L., & Truffer, B. (2016). The interplay of institutions, actors and technologies in socio-technical systems—An analysis of transformations in the Australian urban water sector. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 103, 298-312.
Gawer, A., & Phillips, N. (2013). Institutional work as logics shift: The case of Intel’s transformation to platform leader. Organization studies, 34(8), 1035-1071.
Geels, F. W., & Verhees, B. (2011). Cultural legitimacy and framing struggles in innovation journeys: a cultural-performative perspective and a case study of Dutch nuclear energy (1945–1986). Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 78(6), 910-930.
Gong, H. and Hassink, R. (2018) Co-evolution in contemporary economic geography: towards a theoretical framework. Regional Studies (forthcoming).
Grillitsch, M., Asheim, B., Trippl, M., 2017. Unrelated knowledge combinations: Unexplored potential for regional industrial path development. Papers in Innovation Studies (Paper no. 2017/10).
Gustafsson, R., Jääskeläinen, M., Maula, M., and Uotila, J. (2016) Emergence of industries: A review and future directions, International Journal of Management Reviews, 18: 28-50.
Hansen, T., Coenen, L., 2015. The geography of sustainability transitions: Review, synthesis and reflections on an emergent research field. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 17, 92-109.
Hampel, C., Lawrence, T. B., & Tracey, P. (2017). Institutional work: Taking stock and making it matter. In Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Lawrence, T. B., & Meyer, R. E. (Eds.). (2017). The Sage handbook of organizational institutionalism. Sage
Hassink, R., Isaksen, A., and Trippl, M. (2018) Towards a comprehensive understanding of new regional industrial path development. Papers in Economic Geography and Innovation Studies (forthcoming).
Huenteler, J., Schmidt, T., Ossenbrink, J., Hoffmann, V., 2016. Technology Life-Cycles in the Energy Sector – Technological Characteristics and the Role of Deployment for Innovation. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 104, 102-121.
Isaksen, A., Trippl, M., 2016. Path development in different regional innovation systems; A Conceptual Analysis. In M. Parrilli, R. Fitjar, and A. Rodríguez-Pose (eds.) Innovation Drivers and Regional Innovation Strategies. New York and London: Routledge
Lawrence, T. B., Leca, B., & Zilber, T. B. (2013). Institutional work: Current research, new directions and overlooked issues. Organization Studies, 34(8), 1023-1033.
MacKinnon, D., Dawley, S., Pike, A., and Cumbers, A. (2018) Rethinking Path Creation: A Geographical Political Economy Approach, Economic Geography (forthcoming).
Markard, J., Wirth, S., & Truffer, B. (2016). Institutional dynamics and technology legitimacy–A framework and a case study on biogas technology. Research Policy, 45(1), 330-344.
Raviola, E., & Norbäck, M. (2013). Bringing technology and meaning into institutional work: Making news at an Italian business newspaper. Organization Studies, 34(8), 1171-1194.
Sotarauta, M., & Mustikkamäki, N. (2015). Institutional entrepreneurship, power, and knowledge in innovation systems: institutionalization of regenerative medicine in Tampere, Finland. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 33(2), 342-357.
Seo, M. G., & Creed, W. D. (2002). Institutional contradictions, praxis, and institutional change: A dialectical perspective. Academy of management review, 27(2), 222-247.
Thornton, P. H., Ocasio, W., & Lounsbury, M. (2012). The institutional logics perspective: A new approach to culture, structure, and process. Oxford University Press on Demand.
Tödtling, F., & Trippl, M. (2018). Regional innovation policies for new path development–beyond neo-liberal and traditional systemic views. European Planning Studies, 1-17.
York, J. G. and Lenox, M. J. (2014) Exploring the sociocultural determinants of de novo versus de alio entry in emerging industries, Strategic Management Journal, 35: 1930-1951.
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Robert Hassink
Professor of Economic Geography
Dept. of Geography, Kiel University
Hermann-Rodewald-Str. 9
24098 Kiel, Germany
tel. 0049-431-880-2951
fax 0049-431-880-5290
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.wigeo.uni-kiel.de/en/People/robert-hassink
Visiting Professor in the School of Geography, Politics & Sociology (Centre for Urban & Regional Development Studies (CURDS)), Newcastle University, UK
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/curds/people/visiting.htm
ResearchGate Profile: Robert Hassink
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