As China has celebrated its economic boom over the past decades, scientific research within the R&D sector of industry has become an active arena for Science and Technology Studies (STS) in understanding how science contributes to social change in China. Two themes are central in this sociological work: the study of secular change in China, in particular, change in its biotech industries exemplified by work in the BGI (formerly known as Beijing Genomics Institute); the investigation of interdisciplinarity in that context. This research sheds new light on explanatory practice in interdisciplinary research (IDR) strategy as patterns of interaction in the social process of scientific knowledge production, and its contribution also includes bridging the sociology of scientific knowledge production and research policy studies. In this thesis, I examine a number of topics at three interrelated levels of analysis. First, it explores the theoretical development of the academic discipline and the notion of interdisciplinarity, with a focus on the balance of normative and descriptive approaches in understanding their social functionality as embodied by what I name as Paradiscipline (the initial stage of IDR project). The second level investigates closely how IDR patterns emerge and evolve in the sequencing-based industrial R&D practice in the case of the BGI. Social, cultural, and institutional factors directing and conditioning collective actions by status groups within interaction network are carefully weighed against the context that scientific expertise speak to power in China's social setting. The last level is dedicated to yield more pervasive implications including the organizational structure of interaction and modelling of scientific research, via comparative analysis of traditional S&T management and governing 'Big Science'. It further addresses the issues around on-site governance of China's biotechnology industry R&D, at both management practice and policy making levels, on the basis of social embedment.

The aim of this thesis is twofold; to gain and understanding of how CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, interacts with industry; and to gain an understanding of how CERN can become a resource for industry. Both parts of the purpose also have implications for the issue of CERN’s usefulness to industry. Starting from the popular argument that scientific research can be useful for society through its potential benefits for industry; the thesis investigates the interaction between CERN and Swedish industry. As a complex research organisation is not a homogenous entity, CERN is regarded as a collection of heterogeneous resources which companies can relate to, and benefit from, in different ways.   It is argued that, in order to understand how CERN can be useful for industry, it is important to understand what CERN is. A substantial part of the thesis is therefore dedicated to describing CERN and its context. Apart from a description of CERN’s activities, structures, and history; the case specifically describes two of the main contact points between CERN and industry; technology transfer and procurement. Of the 15 Swedish companies that constitute the industry part of the study, two of the CERN-industry relationships are elaborated on (Ericsson and ABB). The case is primarily based on interviews with over 90 people carried out at CERN and in Sweden, as well as informal conversations and observations during extended visits at CERN. The findings suggest that companies can gain knowledge (and technologies) from CERN, but that it is through interaction rather than through specialised structures that these resources are acquired. The interaction between CERN and industry is restricted by CERN’s procurement rules, which affects what interaction is possible. The increased focus at CERN on knowledge transfer issues may result in increased transfer, but the study indicates that for this to happen an increased focus on interaction is necessary.

From the perspective of suppliers, this thesis explores what value suppliers can gain from delivering to big-science organizations (BSOs). Inspired by the framework of supplier-perceived value (SPV) by Walter et al. (2001), a new model is developed specifically for the BSO-supplier relationship focusing on the indirect functions, especially in the innovation dimension and the market dimension. Based on a quantitative survey contains 38 big-science suppliers in Sweden, three main findings are identified via the analysis of multiple regression and independent t-test: 1) suppliers are more likely to acquire value from enhanced process-development and promoted influence in the extended customer networks resulting from relationships with BSOs; 2) suppliers with long-term experience working with BSOs are reported to have a higher supplier-perceived value than those in short-term relationships; 3) the mismatch between the performed activities/resources of BSO- supplier relationship and the relatively poor supplier-perceived value. Suppliers are offered with opportunities but meanwhile are largely constrained to benefit from the dyad relationship with a BSO; thereby, the possibility to integrate, transform, and apply the outcome in other spaces of the network beyond the contract with the BSO in the future becomes a critical source of value for suppliers. The implications of this study challenge some prevailing opinions about the value of BSOs and add to our understandings of the supplier-perceived value in BSO-supplier relationships.

Le discours sur l’innovation oriente la recherche scientifique médicale publique vers un développement technologique et économique à court terme. À ce titre, la médecine régénératrice est une thérapie innovatrice marquée par une logique d’accumulation spéculative qui porte à la fois sur les cellules humaines et sur la façon de mener la recherche. Or, une réorganisation de la recherche scientifique liée à une nouvelle conception économique de la science et de la technologie ainsi qu’un rôle différent attribué à l’État constituent le cadre institutionnel contemporain qui émerge à la fin des années 1970. Le changement induit par cette idée d’innovation et sur lequel s’attarde ce mémoire porte non pas sur l’usage ou la destination de la science, mais sur l’extension du raisonnement économique. Celui-ci ne survient pas à l’étape du développement, après que la recherche ait été effectuée en vertu du modèle de la « Big Science ». Au contraire, il remonte du marché pour s’installer très tôt au stade de la compréhension des mécanismes biologiques et dans un espace qui relève de la propriété collective : le laboratoire public. Le passage du caractère « exogène » à « endogène » de la recherche scientifique publique vis-à-vis de l’économie est au cœur d’une discussion sur l’hégémonie de la logique de marché. / This dissertation discusses the idea of technological innovation in regenerative medicine in Canada. While this potentially groundbreaking therapy is publicly funded and at an early stage of the understanding of cellular processes, the analysis shows that it is already concerned with the marketing of the scientific work. This raises questions about how public laboratories framed by a scientific research closely tied up with economic concerns and with a shift in the role of the State carry speculation and lead to a technological oriented production of knowledge. This writing doesn’t debate science as a mean or science as an end. It is rather about the extension of the economic reasoning. Indeed, the market’s reading grid as the starting point is the story of the hegemony of a specific logic which turns regenerative medicine research into an economic venture.

Geology is undergoing changes that could influence its knowledge claims, reportedly becoming more laboratory-based, technology-driven, quantitative, and physics- and chemistry-rich over time. This dissertation uses techniques from information science and linguistics to examine the geologic literature of 1945-2005. It consists of two studies: an examination of the geological literature as an expanding network of related subdisciplines, and an investigation of the linguistic and graphical argumentation strategies within geological journal articles. The first investigation is a large-scale study of topics within articles from 67 geologic journals. Clustering of subdiscipline journals based on titles and keywords reveals six major areas of geology: sedimentology/stratigraphy, oceans/climate, solid-earth, earth-surface, hard-rock, and paleontology. Citation maps reveal similar relationships. Text classification of titles and keywords from general-geology journals reveals that geological research has shifted away from economic geology towards physics- and chemistry-based topics. Geological literature has grown and fragmented ("twigged") over time, sustained in its extreme specialization by the scientific collaborations characteristic of "big science." The second investigation is a survey of linguistic and graphic features within geological journal articles that signal certain types of scientific activity and reasoning. Longitudinal studies show that "classical geology" articles within Geological Society of America Bulletin have become shorter and more graphically dense from 1945-2005. Maps and graphs replace less-efficient text, photographs, and sketches. Linguistic markers reveal increases in formal scientific discourse, specialized vocabulary, and reading difficulty. Studies comparing GSA Bulletin to five subdiscipline journals reveals that, in 2005, GSA Bulletin, AAPG Bulletin, and Journal of Sedimentary Research had similar graphic profiles and presented both field and laboratory data. Ground Water, Journal of Geophysical Research - Solid Earth, and Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta had more equations, graphs, and numerical-modeling results than the other journals. The dissertation concludes that geology evolves by spawning physics- and chemistry-rich subdisciplines with distinct methodologies. Publishing geologists accommodate increased theoretical rigor, not using classic hallmarks of hard science (e.g., equations), but by mobilizing spatial arguments within an increasingly dense web of linguistic and graphical signs. Substantial differences in topic, methodology, and argumentation between subdisciplines manifest the multifaceted and complex consistution of geology and geologic philosophy

The Human Genome Project (HGP), the name given to the scientific program to map and decode all of human genetic material, has been projected to revolutionize the conduct of biological science in the twenty-first century. For several years before its formation in 1990, a federally-funded, systematic study of the human genome was discussed first in the scientific arena and then in the public arena. The central thesis of this dissertation is that the arguments supporting or rejecting creation of the HGP and the rhetorical devices used to further those arguments had a major influence on the shape the HGP took in 1991. The argumentation used both for and against the creation of the HGP before the public as well as on the border between the public and scientific arenas is studied. The rhetorical devices such as metaphor, narrative, and selective word choices used to further these arguments are also examined. In particular, a rhetorical content analysis was performed on the 1986-1991 argumentation available to the most crucial audience for such persuasion: the members of Congress who ultimately voted for or against the program's funding and its establishment as a part of U.S. science policy. The proponents of the HGP, especially after the first year of public debate, presented their arguments in a wider arena of discussion and presented more and more varied arguments to advocate the project. The opposition raised questions that had for the most part been answered earlier in the debate. Often anti-HGP arguments focused on less effective audiences (scientists instead of members of Congress). Opposition to the project didn't become organized until near the end of the time frame studied, too late to have much of an impact on the outcome of the debate. The rhetorical devices studied served to magnify the impact of arguments used: in particular, the metaphor served as a boundary object to bridge discussions between the scientific and the public arenas. Ultimately the victory in the debate over the establishment of the HGP was awarded to the promulgators of the strongest underlying metaphor--the idealized excitement and profit of exploration of unknown territory--and the benefits to come from filling in and conquering the unknown areas of the human genetic map, territory the U.S. was eager to claim for its own. / Ph. D.

Dans de grands projets tels qu’accélérateurs ou détecteurs de particules, les interfaces et les frontières se révèlent à la fois critiques et sous-estimées. Le manageur technique, acteur parmi les autres, se trouve placé à des nœuds de réseau où il doit mettre en œuvre des espaces d'échanges afin de susciter des conduites collaboratives. À partir d’études de cas issus du terrain du CERN, la thèse adopte trois principes issus de la littérature de la complexité, les principes dialogique,hologrammique et d’auto-éco-organisation. Elle propose une construction méthodologique matricielleoriginale menant à l'élaboration d'un modèle transactionnel de l’acteur d’interface.L’espace d’échanges collaboratif devient le lieu où se déploie la dynamique de transformation del’acteur d’interface en acteur-frontière. Les objets intermédiaires élaborés lors du processus deconception / intégration y sont simultanément transformés en objets frontières, qui sont mobiliséspour la réalisation du produit dans le cadre récursivement déterminé du projet. L’intérêt d’uneapproche globale et couplée de cette dynamique des espaces d'échanges conduit à proposer un«hypercompas» afin d'orienter «l’agir ↔ penser» du manageur technique. / An approach through the complexity of the collaborative process of design, integration and realization:a transactional model of the interface actor and dynamics of exchange spacesAbstractIn large projects such as particle accelerators or detectors, interfaces and boundaries revealthemselves to be both critical and underestimated. The technical manager, an actor among others,finds himself placed at network nodes where he must set up exchanges spaces in order to generatecollaborative behaviours. Starting with case studies from the field of CERN, the thesis follows threeprinciples based on the dialogical, the hologramic and the self-eco-organization principles, asexpanded in the writings on complexity. It puts forward an original methodological matrix constructionleading to a transactional model of the interface actor.The collaborative exchanges spaces builds itself as a place for the dynamic transformation of theinterface actor into a boundary actor. Intermediate objects, created during the design / integrationprocess, are simultaneously transformed into boundary objects. They are instrumental in therealization of the product: this takes place in the framework of the project which has been determinedthrough a recursive process. The interest generated by such a global and combined approach of thisdynamic process leads to the proposal of a “hypercompass”, with the aim of providing the means forthe technical manager to orient his “acting ↔thinking”.