The Social Pathways of Emerging Technologies: An Ethnographic Case Study of a Chemical Manufacturing Company

• In Event: Innovation Under Fire: Shifting Imaginaries of Science, Technology and Society Governance – I

Abstract

Emerging biotechnologies such as synthetic biology have the potential to reshape the chemical industry due to changes in required equipment, expertise, and process management. These new technologies come with promissory narratives of increased sustainability and safety but raise considerations about what is ethical and what is socially acceptable. The social processes by which these narratives emerge and are exchanged can be summarised in two ways. First, as sense-making (how individuals use their own personal histories and belief systems to understand uncertain concepts like emerging technologies); and second, as sense-giving (how stakeholders may deliberately influence the view of the new technology). While the concepts of sense-making and sense-giving have a basis in organisational studies, the framework takes many cues from STS in the way they explore the construction of emerging narratives in the context of uncertainty. It offers a way to discuss new innovations which are typically strategy-orientated to allow more critical understandings from STS.

This paper uses a case study of a chemical manufacturing company currently in the process of embedding new biotechnology practices to examine how emerging innovation pathways are influenced by processes of sense-making and sense-giving. Interactions with wider stakeholder networks are also included in the case study to recognise that influencing factors are not easily bound within a company. Social processes of adopting (or resisting) an emerging technology are explored through ethnographic data collection, interviews, and documentary analysis. Relationships of trust and power, and their role of shaping ethical attitudes towards emerging technologies, will be discussed.

Author

• Penny Polson, University of Manchester