Abstract
Managing futures in the semiconductor industry is heavily predicated on their collective creation. Shared expectations need to be developed, technological options evaluated and strategic plans made. Our study is based on in-depth and long-term qualitative empirical research and examines how social and technical futures are created by organizing field-configuring events such as roadmaps and conferences. We view these events as part of the institutional work and institutional life within the organizational field of semiconductor manufacturing. Our analysis shows how the collective practices of creating and managing contested futures evolve in the field and how they configure specific modes of reflexive self-regulation. We draw on institutional and practice theory in order to contribute to a more general understanding of the collective practices of future-making and to situate them within overarching issues of legitimation, signification and domination.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This chapter is based on the research project ‘Path-Creating Networks: Innovating Next Generation Lithography in Germany and the U.S.’, which was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation from 2004 to 2009.
- 2.
Another important institutionalized practice is the increasing use of consortia to push the technology from laboratory to factory, as we have discussed elsewhere (Sydow et al. 2012).
- 3.
In 2016, a final version of the ITRS was published and an initiative was founded to create a new roadmap procedure (the ITRS 2.0) adjusted to the new challenges facing the industry. This shift shows how instruments like roadmaps are continuously adapted to requirements in the field. Our discussion, however, focuses on the original ITRS.
- 4.
However, the TWG heads had the right to refuse interested parties who they believed lacked the skills or resources to make an adequate contribution to the TWG.
- 5.
However, simply putting a technological option onto the ITRS will not necessarily make it happen. In current semiconductor technology development, extreme technical and financial challenges still have to be resolved before promises can go into production.
- 6.
We have discussed the importance of consortia in the semiconductor industry elsewhere (Sydow et al. 2012).
- 7.
www.sematech.org/meetings/archives/litho/ngl/20010829, accessed 2011-05-05.
References
Abrahamson, Eric, and Lori Rosenkopf. 1993. Institutional and Competitive Bandwagons: Using Mathematical Modeling as a Tool to Explore Innovation Diffusion. The Academy of Management Review 18: 487–517.
Borodovsky, Yan. 2006. Marching to the Beat of Moore’s Law. Proceedings SPIE 6153, Advances in Resist Technology and Processing XXIII, 615301.
Browning, Larry D., and Judy C. Shetler. 2000. SEMATECH. Saving the U.S. Semiconductor Industry. College Station: A&M University Press.
DiMaggio, Paul J. 1988. Interest and Agency in Institutional Theory. In Institutional Patterns and Organizations. Culture and Environment, ed. Lynne G. Zucker, 3–22. Cambridge: Ballinger.
DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell. 1983. The Iron Cage Revisited. Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields. American Sociological Review 48: 147–160.
Fujimura, Joan H. 1988. The Molecular Biological Bandwagon in Cancer Research. Where Social Worlds Meet. Social Problems 35 (3): 261–283.
Galvin, Robert. 1998. Science Roadmaps. Science 280 (5365): 803–805.
Giddens, Anthony. 1979. Central Problems in Social Theory. Action, Structure and Contradictions in Social Analysis. London: Macmillan.
———. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hoffman, Andrew J. 1999. Institutional Evolution and Change: Environmentalism and the U.S. Chemical Industry. Academy of Management Journal 42 (4): 351–371.
Hoffman, Andrew J., and William Ocasio. 2001. Not All Events Are Attended Equally: Toward a Middle-Range Theory of Industry Attention to External Events. Organization Science 12: 414–434.
ITRS. 2009. International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors. 2009 Edition. Executive Summary. http://www.itrs.net/Links/2009ITRS/2009Chapters_2009Tables/2009_ExecSum.pdf. Accessed 18 Jan 2010.
Jarzabkowski, Paula, and David Seidl. 2008. The Role of Meetings in the Social Practice of Strategy. Organization Studies 29 (11): 1391–1426.
Lampel, Joseph, and Alan D. Meyer. 2008. Field-Configuring Events as Structuring Mechanisms. How Conferences, Ceremonies, and Trade Shows Constitute New Technologies, Industries, and Markets. Journal of Management Studies 45 (6): 1025–1035.
Lawrence, Thomas B., and Roy Suddaby. 2006. Institutions and Institutional Work. In The SAGE Handbook of Organization Studies, ed. Stewart R. Clegg, Cynthia Hardy, Tom Lawrence, and Walter R. Nord, 215–254. London: Sage.
Lee, Jung H., Hyung-Il Kim, and Robert Phaal. 2012. An Analysis of Factors Improving Technology Roadmap Credibility: A Communications Theory Assessment of Roadmapping Processes. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 79 (2): 263–280.
Lincoln, Yvonna S., and Egon G. Guba. 1985. Naturalistic Inquiry. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Meyer, Uli, and Cornelius Schubert. 2007. Integrating Path Dependency and Path Creation in a General Understanding of Path Constitution. The Role of Agency and Institutions in the Shaping of Technological Innovations. Science, Technology & Innovation Studies 3 (1): 23–44.
Möllering, Guido. 2009. Market Constitution Analysis. A New Framework Applied to Solar Power Technology Markets. Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Working Paper, 09/7: Köln.
———. 2010. Collective Market-Making Efforts at an Engineering Conference. MPIfG Discussion Paper, 10/2.
Moore, Gordon E. 1965. Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits. Electronics 38 (8): 114–117.
Munir, Kamal A. 2005. The Social Construction of Events: A Study of Institutional Change in the Photographic Field. Organization Studies 26 (1): 93–112.
Oliver, Amalya L., and Kathleen Montgomery. 2008. Using Field-Configuring Events for Sense-Making: A Cognitive Network Approach. Journal of Management Studies 45 (6): 1147–1167.
Probert, David R., and Michael Radnor. 2003. Frontier Experiences from Industry-Academia Consortia. Research-Technology Management 42 (2): 27–30.
Schubert, Cornelius, Jörg Sydow, and Arnold Windeler. 2013. The Means of Managing Momentum. Bridging Technological Paths and Organisational Fields. Research Policy 42 (8): 1389–1405.
Seale, Clive. 1999. The Quality of Qualitative Research. London: Sage.
SEMATECH. 2010. Proceedings Archives. http://www.sematech.org/meetings/archives.htm. Accessed 22 Sept 2010.
Sydow, Jörg, Arnold Windeler, Cornelius Schubert, and Guido Möllering. 2012. Organizing R&D Consortia for Path Creation and Extension. The Case of Semiconductor Manufacturing Technologies. Organization Studies 33 (7): 907–936.
van Lente, Harro, and Arie Rip. 1998. Expectations in Technological Developments: An Example of Prospective Structures to be Filled in by Agency. In Getting New Technologies Together. Studies in Making Sociotechnical Order, eds. Cornelis Disco and Barend J. R. van der Meulen, 203–229. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Weick, Karl E. 1995. Sensemaking in Organizations. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Wooten, Melissa, and Andrew J. Hoffman. 2008. Organizational Fields: Past, Present and Future. In The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, ed. Royston Greenwood, Christine Oliver, Kerstin Sahlin, and Roy Suddaby, 130–147. Los Angeles: Sage.
Yin, Robert K. 2009. Case Study Research. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Zilber, Tammar B. 2007. Stories and the Discursive Dynamics of Institutional Entrepreneurship: The Case of Israeli High-Tech After the Bubble. Organization Studies 28 (7): 1035–1054.
———. 2009. Institutional Maintenance as Narrative Acts. In Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organization, ed. Thomas Lawrence, Bernard Leca, and Roy Suddaby, 205–235. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zollo, Maurizio. 2009. Superstitious Learning with Rare Strategic Decisions: Theory and Evidence from Corporate Acquisitions. Organization Science 20 (5): 894–908.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Meyer, U., Schubert, C., Windeler, A. (2018). Creating Collective Futures: How Roadmaps and Conferences Reconfigure the Institutional Field of Semiconductor Manufacturing. In: Krämer, H., Wenzel, M. (eds) How Organizations Manage the Future. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74506-0_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74506-0_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-74505-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-74506-0
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)