Jason Owen-Smith, University of Michigan

Epochal Institutional Change and Academic Research Commercialization
Jason Owen-Smith, Organizational Studies and Sociology, University of Michigan

Description

Semester: 
Fall 2005
Lecture Time: 
Friday, September 23, 2005 (All day)
Lecture Location: 

Room 4212, School of Education

Abstract

I propose an epochal model of institutional change. That model links transformations in a field to the timing and entry points of participants into novel activities. Situated organizational action drives change, but contingent patterns of transformation result in systematic, progressive constraints on behavior and outcomes. Thus, field level transformations are both complex, history dependent outcomes of organizational effort and sources of significant constraint. This paper draws on 18 years (1981-1998) of panel data on patenting and publishing by research-intensive U.S. universities to demonstrate that shifts in institutional rules catalyze lasting change in fields by sparking organizational activity that can transform emergent features of the environment such as stratification systems. Public and proprietary uses of university science are not inherently contradictory. Instead dangers associated with academic research commercialization stem from the process by which publishing and patenting came to represent a hybrid system of advantage.

Recording & Additional Notes

Introducer: Jane Dutton, Ross School of Business