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PurposeWhile previous health-care-related hybridity research has focused on macro- and micro-level investigations, this paper aims to study hybridization at the organizational level, with a specific focus on decision-making. The authors investigate how new politico-economic expectations toward a university hospital as a hybrid organization become internalized via organizational decision-making, resulting in the establishment of a new business collaboration and innovation-oriented unit.Design/methodology/approachThe authors employed a social systems theoretical framework to explore organizational decision-making processes involved in the establishment of the new hybrid hospital unit. Drawing on 15 interviews and nine organizational documents, the authors describe and analyze three decision-making cycles using the concepts of complexity, decision and justification.FindingsThe findings reveal the challenging nature of decision-making during hybridization, as decisions regarding unprecedented organizational structures and activities cannot be justified by traditional decision premises. The authors show that decision-makers use a combination of novel justification strategies, namely, justification by problems, by examples and by obligations, to legitimize decisions oriented at non-traditional activities. Further, the analysis reveals how expectations of several societal systems, i.e. health care, education, science, law, economy and politics, are considered in decision-making taking place in hybrid organizations.Originality/valueThe study draws attention to the complexity of decision-making in a hybrid context and highlights the role of justification strategies in partially reducing complexity by concealing the paradoxical nature of decision-making and ensuring the credibility of resulting decisions. Also, the study presents a move beyond the dualism inherent in many previous hybridity studies by illustrating the involvement of several societal systems in hybridization.

Snellmanilainen sivistyskäsite syventää keskustelua jatkuvasta oppimisesta. Se kuitenkin edellyttää uudenlaisia tutkimusavusteisia menetelmiä ja oppimisympäristöjä, joissa työntekijät, kehittäjät ja johtajat yhdessä kehittävät työtään ja osaamistaan ja tuottavat ratkaisuja ongelmiin.

The present study analyses data collected from a series of developmental seminars in a fingerprint laboratory during which fingerprint examiners jointly discussed and developed their work processes, analytical methods, decision-making criteria and rules of documentation. The analysed organizational development took place in the context of moving from paper to digital documentation and from individually to collectively mastered work process. The fingerprint examiners who participated in the seminar series jointly reflected on their existing professional rules and operational practices, improvement of which was called for to facilitate organizational learning. The analysed data set consists of 10 audio-recorded developmental seminars with written documents as well as notes and decisions that were made during the seminar. The results of the study will reveal the complex ways in which the fingerprint examiners share their practical professional knowledge and collectively create decision-making criteria and rules of investigative practices so as to adapt their work practices to the changing quality requirements, evolving international standards and digitalization of research documentation.

In the recent years, the University of Oulu has taken an active role in supporting its research in social sciences and humanities (SSH). The support has manifested itself in the introduction of new structures such as the “Eudaimonia Institute”, established in the early 2010s to promote and coordinate multi- and cross-disciplinary research in human sciences. “Eudaimonia” constitutes a community in which researchers are provided a collegial and supportive environment for carrying out research. It also serves as a platform in the new service concept called “Rapid Research Radicals” (3R), which aims to develop collaborative excellence and new openings in research. Connected to this, “Tellus Innovation Arena” offers methods and facilitation expertise to support various forms of collaboration. In addition to this, “Oulu Think Tank of Science and Society”, which operates under the auspices of the “Eudaimonia Institute”, was established to facilitate the interaction between scientists in SSH and the broader society. The “Oulu Think Tank” aims to produce policy-relevant research of internationally high standard, and to offer its expertise to different parties, such as companies and science policy makers. The SSH community has also been successfully included in the development of the university’s strategy4 and profiling measures. Abstract In den letzten Jahren hat die Universität von Oulu eine aktive Rolle bei der Unterstützung ihrer Forschung in den Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften (SSH) übernommen. Die Unterstützung manifestierte sich in der Einführung neuer Strukturen wie dem „Eudaimonia Institute“, das Anfang der 2010er Jahre gegründet wurde, um die multi- und interdisziplinäre Forschung am Menschen zu fördern und diese Wissenschaften zu koordinieren. „Eudaimonia“ ist eine Gemeinschaft, in der Forschern ein kollegiales und unterstützendes Umfeld für die Durchführung von Forschungen geboten wird. Es dient auch als Plattform für das neue Servicekonzept „Rapid Research Radicals“ (3R), das auf die Entwicklung kooperativer Spitzenleistungen und neuer Forschungsmöglichkeiten abzielt. In diesem Zusammenhang bietet die „Tellus Innovation Arena“ Methoden und Moderationsexpertise zur Unterstützung verschiedener Formen der Zusammenarbeit. Darüber hinaus wurde die „Oulu Think Tank von Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft“ Gesellschaft gegründet, die unter der Schirmherrschaft des „Eudaimonia-Instituts“ operiert, um die Interaktion zwischen Wissenschaftlern in SSH und der Gesellschaft im weiteren Sinne zu erleichtern. Der „Oulu Think Tank“ zielt darauf ab, politikrelevante Forschung auf international hohem Niveau zu produzieren und sein Know-how verschiedenen Parteien wie Unternehmen und Wissenschaftspolitikern zur Verfügung zu stellen. Die SSH-Community wurde auch erfolgreich in die Entwicklung der Universitätsstrategie und der Profilierungsmaßnahmen einbezogen.

Close interaction between universities, industries, and governments has given rise to hybrid organizations incorporating economic development alongside scientific research and higher education. We will approach this phenomenon and the related organization-theoretical problems by looking at two cases of discipline making to discuss the potential of the concept of organizational field introduced by the neoinstitutionalist school of organization theory. As this concept presumes the Bourdieusian theory of social fields, we will consider possibilities of reflective contesting of the states of doxa in discipline making in regard to organizational aspects of disciplinary boundaries in the university-centered system of higher education, its demarcation to business and schooling, as well as to the related ideology of professionalism and science policy. We will also comment on the Bourdieusian conceptuality inscribed in the neoinstitutionalist metaphor of organizational field from the perspective of systems theory inspired by Luhmann. This is because we believe that further development of the semantic focus in the problem of disciplinary boundaries would benefit from Luhmannian tools designed to grasp organizations as social systems that facilitate interrelations of differentiated function systems relevant for discipline making in current technoscience.

Because of the gross difficulties in measuring the societal impact of academic research, qualitative approaches have been developed in the last decade mostly based on forms of interaction between university and other societal stakeholders. In this paper, we suggest a framework for qualitative analysis based on the distinction between three dimensions of societal impact: epistemological, artefactual and interactive-institutional. The epistemological dimension addresses what new research results and understanding of relevant phenomena have contributed to solving of technological and societal problems. The artefactual dimension comprises analysis of the artefacts, methods, tools and services through the use of which societal impact is realized. Finally, in the interactional–institutional dimension the forms and forums of collaboration between university and other societal actors are explored. The model is elaborated by analyzing the work of three university research groups in different disciplines. The framework may be used in articulating formative and dialogical peer evaluation of research to foster learning and social improvement as well as in evaluation of research proposals and research programs.

Despite the broad literature about distributed leadership, empirical research on the dynamics of distributed leadership is rare. This is the case especially in interorganizational settings facing c...

The growing role of universities in the knowledge economy as well as technology transfer has increasingly been conceptualized in terms of the hybridization of public academic work and private business activity. In this article, we examine the difficulties and prospects of this kind of intermingling by studying the long-term trajectories of two research groups operating in the fields of plant biotechnology and language technology. In both cases, the attempts to simultaneously pursue academic and commercial activities led to complicated boundary maintenance, which arose from the conflicting procedures and requirements of the two activities as well as from the double roles assumed by the actors involved. We, thus, argue that the construction of boundaries is not as contingent and strategic as has often been assumed but is built, instead, on the characteristic goals and tasks of the activities in question. Moreover, we suggest that the discussion on university—industry relationships and the entrepreneurial university has by and large neglected the fact that most universities are either public sector entities or tax-exempt organizations thereby being subject to strict rules and regulations that govern the ways in which they may become engaged in commercial activities. Furthermore, several other enduring cultural features, such as the university’s commitment to open scholarly communication, make the boundary between university and commerce relatively stable. As a consequence, the results of this study lend support to the thesis according to which boundaries in science are not always created at will but reflect the long history and multifaceted societal relevance of this particular institution. This in turn implies that the commodification of university research is bound to be more difficult than what the proponents of the entrepreneurial university seem to assume.

This article studies the learning and capability formation of a biotechnology firm by analysing its development path, which is composed of successive product development and innovation processes. In collaborative product development work, network collaboration, as well as the acquisition of new competences and learning, evolves simultaneously and interactively. Searching for and encountering partners with complementary knowledge and resources is important in the emergence of new product-development processes. To improve understanding of this path formation, the article draws on cultural—historical activity theory, science and technology studies and the epistemology of things and effects. These all underline the significance of material artefacts for learning and activity. The epistemology of things and effects addresses the knowledge of how things work in experimental systems and products. Enzymes, proteins and instruments are put to work in a stabilized way as parts of new products. The effects so mastered entail the functional qualities that make products competitive in the marketplace.

The purpose of the present study was to analyse professional fingerprint examiners’ investigative practices in the context of discrepancy decisions concerning challenging latents during fingerprint analysis and identification. The participants were fingerprint experts from the Forensic Laboratory of the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation. The data were from five audio-recorded “discrepancy meetings” where two examiners were discussing the rationale and justification for their differing interpretations of challenging and distorted fingerprint evidence. The meetings were chaired by the quality manager of the fingerprint group, who also in the first author of this article. The research questions addressed were as follows: What does the examiner see in the latent fingerprints? What does the examiner actively do with the latents? How were decisions made during the investigative process? In accordance with Goodwin's professional vision framework, the results revealed how the participants used partial and limited information in making judgments about the difficult and distorted latents. The examiners appeared to be involved in active, constructive efforts, mentally, to repair poor latents by supplementing with missing information. They also highlighted various aspects of latents by colour coding as well as manipulated fingerprint images in several ways so as to make the significant patterns easier to recognize. Because the methods and practices of characterizing latents were only vaguely specified, the examiners used locally developed ad hoc practices to facilitate their investigations, ending up with different interpretations. It is concluded in the article that the fingerprint community in Finland should make strong efforts to develop the methods of fingerprint investigation and determine clearer criteria for decision making and documentation practices. Furthermore, the interpretations made by fingerprint experts should be made more transparent to the customers.

This article reflects on current debate over transformations of scientific research and universities. Four well-known mutation theories (Mode-2 knowledge production, triple helix of university–industry–government relations, academic capitalism and enterprise university), and their recent critiques, are reviewed. It is suggested that a better understanding of the changes can be achieved by drawing analytic insight from research that speaks about scientific practices. Advantages that may be so attained are illustrated through a case study of a plant-biotechnology research group that pursued to straddle the fuzzy university-business boundary. On such grounds, three arguments that pertain to the mutation theories are put forward: (1) the need to appreciate the dynamics between theoretical, experimental and applied dimensions of research work; (2) the fact that external research funding intermingles with the complex social ecology of disciplines at the departmental level of universities; (3) the difficulties academics encounter as they try to fuse their university activities with private commercial development.

This study draws from the social world perspective to examine the relationships between scientific disciplines (i.e., molecular biology, plant physiology, agronomy, horticulture, and agroecology) at a university department in the field of plant production research. The interview data obtained in the study revealed that the complex organizational ecology of disciplines in the department involved four sources of conflict: (1) a challenge of the established departmental research tradition of agronomy, (2) a struggle over working space, (3) the extension into the department of an ethical-ideological controversy over genetically modified organisms, and (4) the anchoring of disciplines to different organizational units of the university. Thus, instead of facilitating the synergistic potential of the disciplines, the organizational arrangements at the university blocked it. From this perspective, the study challenges, but does not refute, previous symbolic interactionist research by suggesting that conflicts may function as valuable analytic devices in revealing how formal organizational structures hinder the achievement of social order at the working level.

This paper takes a critical stand towards the Mode-2 thesis and the Triple-Helix model as schemes to describe the association of university research with applied motives and commercial and industrial actors. By drawing from a case study of a plant-biotechnology research group, which transformed into a start-up company, the paper suggests that using these models as conceptual frameworks in the empirical analysis may run the risk of glossing over some vital conceptual insights. The first instance where more focused attention should be given is the analytic distinction between theoretical, methodological and applied dimensions of a local research program. By appreciating it, a central source of dynamic that formed the ground for the commercialization of the group’s research results is preserved. The second deficiency is that neither the Mode 2 nor the Triple Helix pays close enough attention to the problems and contradictions that come into the world as university research results are commercialized. In this respect, three problem areas are addressed: 1) the ownership of intellectual property rights, 2) the industrial collaboration and the difficulties of transferring the research results to the market, and 3) the failed attempt of creating a hybrid community between the research group and the spin-off company. Also these should be given a more central role in the models since they seem to be vital challenges for researchers-entrepreneurs as they move from academic to industrial focus.

This paper will address problems in strategic management process from the perspective of organisational decline. It will review the literature on early warning signals of decline and contribute to an understanding of their role in organisational development. To facilitate more advanced theorising about early warning signals, the paper will draw from cultural-historical activity theory suggesting that early warnings should be conceptualised in terms of organisational disturbances that act as visible evidence of developmental contradictions. By combining activity theory with strategy process research, the paper will open up an avenue for organisational analysis to better understand the nature of weak signs of decline and provide a better basis for their resolution. The conceptualisation will be illustrated by referring to a case example of a firm operating in service production.

The main contribution of this paper for social studies of scientific practice is to use and further elaborate the concept of experimental system. It is expanded from mere epistemic concerns to also incorporate the built-in practicality and societal relevance of scientific research. For this, an analysis of object construction by a potato-biotechnology research group is presented. The group's object of activity is conceptualized as a dual one comprisingboth the epistemic and applied objectives. The application object points to the virus-resistant cultivated potato under construction, the epistemic object to the knowledge on the virus-resistance mechanism. Two major phases of the group's work are perceived as distinct experimental systems. The transition between them is analysed in terms of a gradual evolution characterised by network collaboration, ad hoc improvization, resistance, opportunism and informal interaction.

Universities in the Western countries have become complex organizations involving many kinds of activities. Since the Second World War, the traditional functions of universities – academic research and higher education – have expanded simultaneously as universities have taken on a whole variety of societal service functions often termed the university’s third mission (Clark 1998). From the beginning of the 1980s, a central part of this changed landscape has been the commercialization of university research results. According to a number of analysts, this alteration, fostered by competitiveness-oriented national innovation policies (Slaughter and Rhoads 1996), has led to the intermingling of public university and private business activities. Four different conceptions of such hybridization can be identified. First, the concept of the “Mode 2” knowledge production (Gibbons et al. 1994) claims that traditional academic research has merged with the rest of society, including politics and the markets. Scientific knowledge has become “contextualized”, meaning that its scope has been expanded so that problems of various societal groups and organizations are set as the starting points of research, instead of purely scientific questions (Nowotny et al. 2001, pp. 65, 106). Second, the intertwinement of science, politics, and business life has created what David Guston (1999) has called boundary organizations, i.e., organizations that are responsible for more than one social world at once. Such organizations operate as initiators and sponsors of new projects, thus enhancing interaction across the boundaries of various activities. Third, the commercial potential of university research has given rise to university– industry research relationships, especially in the quickly developing fields of knowledge-based industries, such as information and communication technology and biotechnology (e.g., Powell and Owen-Smith 1998). In these networks, research is often distributed between three closely related organizations, i.e., public research institutes, companies and universities (Fransman 2001). Fourth, entire universities have sought to redirect their activities, giving birth to what was termed

The purpose of this paper is to enhance understanding of the development of trust during commercial product development collaboration. It elaborates on a performance-based conception of trust by analyzing the history of cooperation between two biotechnology firms. The means and mechanisms of trust formation in the different phases of this collaboration relationship are examined. The paper concludes that secrecy, collaborative and licensing contracts were necessary precautionary measures needed by the firms to move from one phase of collaboration to another. They contributed to the formation of intentional trust between the companies but had no role in creating competence trust between them. In contrast to this, actions directly related to product development work and marketing, such as training courses, feedback from clients, parallel testing, performing the agreed duties and keeping schedules, played a key role in the formation of competence trust.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance understanding of the calculative bases of trust and distrust during the negotiation phase of new commercial collaboration relationships. Whereas the existing literature mostly offers quantitative snapshot pictures of inter-firm trust formation, this research followed a process-oriented approach. Analysis of interview and documentary data obtained from two sets of inter-firm collaborative negotiations showed that calculus-based perceived trustworthiness between firms arises from the presence of the following conditions: Distrust, in turn, ensues from the lack of these. These sources of perceived calculative trust and distrust provide the prospective partners with rough practical estimates of how the forthcoming partnership might eventually work out, in other words, they form the bedrock of a new social institution, the collaborative network.

Tieteellisessä kirjallisuudessa on vain vähän näyttöä siitä, miten ajallisesti rajoittuneet (temporal) ja kehkeytyvät (emergent) organisaatiot oppivat yhteisöinä ja määrittelevät toimintansa kohteen tai olemassaolonsa tarkoituksen. Uuden tutkimustiedon tuottaminen on tärkeää myös niiden toiminnan oikeuttamiseksi ja toiminnan jatkuvuuden ja jatkuvan oppimisen tukemiseksi. Analysoimme tässä luvussa moniorganisatorisen yrittäjyysyhteisön ekspansiivista oppimisprosessia ja toiminnan yhteisen kohteen kehittymistä muutoslaboratorioksi kutsutun kehittämisintervention aikana. Tunnistimme aineistosta kolme ekspansiiviseksi oppimiseksi tulkitsemaamme vaihetta, joiden myötä kehittämisinterventioon osallistuneiden toimijoiden toiminnan yhteinen kohde muodostui ja kehittyi: ongelmien analyysi, jossa osallistujien puhe keskittyi ongelmien kuvaamiseen ja kohde näyttäytyi ristiriitaisena ja vaikeatajuisena; ongelmien käsittely, jossa kohde alkoi saada ratkaisu-ulottuvuuksia; ja ratkaisun laatiminen, jossa kohde sanallistettiin yrittäjyysyhteisön uudenlaiseksi toimintamalliksi. Tässä luvussa kuvaamamme tutkimus lisää kulttuurihistorialliseen toiminnan teoriaan perustuvaa ymmärrystä toiminnan yhteisen kohteen muodostumisesta ja kehittymisestä ajallisesti rajoittuneissa ja kehkeytyvissä organisaatioissa. Tutkimus tarjoaa lisäksi uutta tietoa muutoslaboratoriomenetelmän soveltamisesta vielä suhteellisen harvinaisissa moniorganisatorisissa konteksteissa. Tutkimus tuottaa myös tietoa jatkuvan oppimisen ja muutoksen mahdollisuuksista ja haasteista tällaisissa ja muissa monimutkaisissa toimintaympäristöissä.