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Corporate Research Laboratories and the History of Innovation

David Pithan

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Paperback

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English
Routledge
09 January 2023
"With the beginning of the twentieth century, American corporations in the chemical and electrical industries began establishing industrial research laboratories. Some went on to become world-famous not only for their scientific and technological breakthroughs but also for the new union of science and industry they represented. Innovative ideas do not simply appear out of the blue and spread on their own merit. Rather, the laboratory's diffusion takes place in a cultural context that goes beyond corporate capital and technological change.

Using discourse analysis as a method to comprehensively capture the organizational field of the early American R&D laboratories from 1870 to 1930, this book uncovers the collective meanings associated with the industrial laboratory. Meanings such as what and where a laboratory is supposed to be, who the scientist is, and what it means to practice science provided cultural resources that made the transfer of the laboratory from academic science into an industrial setting possible by rendering such meanings understandable and operable to big business and organizational entrepreneurs fighting for hegemony in a rapidly evolving market. It analyzes not only the corporations that established laboratories in the United States but also their contexts – economic, political, and especially scientific – showing how ""the industrial laboratory"" was transformed from an organizational novelty into an expected institution in less than two decades.

This book will be of interest to researchers, academics, historians, and students in the fields of organizational change, discourse studies, the management of technology and innovation, as well as business and management history."

By:  
Imprint:   Routledge
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm, 
Weight:   385g
ISBN:   9780367538408
ISBN 10:   0367538407
Series:   Routledge Studies in Management, Organizations and Society
Pages:   268
Publication Date:  
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Primary
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

David M. Pithan is Programme Officer for Strategy and Policy at the German Research Foundation.

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