Corporate Research Laboratories and the History of Innovation (Routledge Studies in Management, Organizations and Society)

"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"-- Provided by publisher Corporate Research Laboratories and the History of Innovation Cover -1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 List of Illustrations 8 Acknowledgments 10 List of Abbreviations 11 1. Introduction 12 2. Theory 16 Diffusion of Innovations 16 What a Diffusion Perspective Can Add 16 Translating Ideas to Make Them Fit 21 Idea Translation in Organizational Fields 23 Of Organizational Fields and Institutions 25 From Institutions to Isomorphism 28 Making the Case for Discourse 31 What Discourse Is, and What It Is Not 31 Toward an Operationalization of Discourse 36 The Gist of It 39 Notes 41 3. The Innovation: Industrial Research Laboratory 43 Where It Originated from 43 How It Proliferated 48 The Problem with Mapping R&D Growth 48 Sketching the Growth of Industrial Research Laboratories 49 Laboratories and Their Parent Companies 52 Staff, Scientific Disciplines, and Expenditures 54 The Decline of the Independent Inventor 56 The Research Pioneers 57 1900: GE 58 The Electrical Industry in the Late Nineteenth Century and the Birth of GE 58 Pushing for Change: Establishing the Laboratory 60 The First Decades of the GE Research Laboratory 61 1902: Du Pont 63 The Field of Chemistry and Du Pont's Organizational Antecedents 63 Establishing the Laboratories 64 From WWI to "Fundamental Research": The Laboratories' Early Decades 66 1907: AT&T 70 Bell Telephone and the Business of Telephony 70 Establishing the Laboratory 72 Bell Labs: The "Idea Factory" 74 1912: Eastman Kodak 75 George Eastman, Kodak, and the History of Photography 76 The Birth of the Kodak Research Laboratories 78 Mees' Laboratory over the Years 79 General Themes and Concepts 81 Preliminary Findings from the Research Pioneers 86 General Explanatory Notions 86 The Role of Agency 90 The Move toward Science 92 The Status of the Pioneers 95 Notes 96 4. The Organizational Field: US Chemistry, 1870--1930 98 Chemistry as Academic Science: Scientific Societies, Journals, and Chemical Education 99 Scientific Societies and Related Organizations 99 Chemical Journals 105 Chemistry in Higher Education 108 Chemistry in Industry: Companies, Products, and Processes 110 The Development of the Chemical Industry 111 Employment Trends of Chemists in Industry 113 Trade Associations and Other Organizations in the Chemical Industry 115 Chemistry and Politics: WWI, Boosterism, and the New Landscape of Federal Support for Science 117 Chemists in Federal Employment 118 The Effects of WWI 120 Industrialization 120 Militarization 121 Nationalization 122 Politicization 122 Popularization 124 Notes 126 5. Capturing the Discourse about Industrial Research in US Chemistry, 1870--1930 128 Methodological Considerations 128 How to Capture Discourse and Where to Start 128 From Field to Speaker 129 From Speaker to Corpus 132 Dataset Overview 135 Popular Journals 138 General Science Journals 139 Chemistry Journals 140 Industrial Journals 140 Governmental Journals 141 An Event-Based Analysis 141 Events as Focal Points in Discourse 142 Texts as a Unit of Analysis 147 On Quality Control in Discourse Analysis 151 Challenges to Conventional Approaches to Quality Control 151 Four Criteria for Quality Control in Discourse Analysis 152 Notes 155 6. Analyzing the Discourse 156 Interdiscursivity 159 Specialization 164 Conservation Movement 166 Efficiency 168 Research Landscape 170 Preparedness 171 Popularization 172 Legislation 173 Postwar Normalcy 174 Chemical Education 175 Concepts 177 Concept 1: Science, Research, and Industrial Research 177 From Science to Research 179 From Research to Industrial Research 181 Concept 2: Chemistry 184 The Utility of Chemistry 185 Objects 188 Objects: The Laboratory 188 The Laboratory as Birthplace of Facts and Place of the Scientific Method 189 The Why and Who of Laboratories 191 Scale and Scope: Laboratory Relations and Types 193 Subject Positions 197 Subject 1: The Chemist 198 The Chemist as Man of Science 198 Changing Conceptions of the Chemist over Time 202 Opposition and Constituencies over Time: Foremen, Managers, and the Public 204 Subject 2: The Chemical Engineer 208 Who Is the Chemical Engineer? Between Engineering and Chemistry 208 From Conservation to Efficiency and the Laboratory 211 Summarizing Results 213 Notes 218 7. Discussion and Conclusions 219 Summary 219 The Industrial Research Laboratory as Seen through Discourse 219 Science, Laboratories, and Scientists in Sociology and History of Science 226 Discussion 231 Implications for the Diffusion of Innovations, Sociology of Organizations, and History of Science 231 Recontextualizing Diffusion 231 Organizations as Texts 233 Social Science 236 Notes 239 References 240 Archival Sources 262 Discourse Analysis Corpus 262 Index 273 Academic,Science;,Chemistry,and,Politics;,Industrial,Research;,Chemistry,Industry;,Scientific,Societies;,20th,Century;,US,Chemistry;,Research,Pioneers;,Organizational,Fields;,Idea,Translation; Academic Science,Chemistry and Politics,Industrial Research,Chemistry Industry,Scientific Societies,20th Century,US Chemistry,Research Pioneers,Organizational Fields,Idea Translation In the twentieth century, American corporations in the chemical and electrical industries began establishing industrial research laboratories. By analyzing 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.