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 paper presents a challenge to the idea of what some scholars have called the entrepreneurial university. By applying and elaborating on Thomas Gieryn’s concept of boundary work, it offers evidence to the effect that developing an entrepreneurial university is not as straightforward as it may seem from a more generalized perspective. Developing such an entity, at least in the confines of traditional, public-funded universities, is complicated by the emergence of a boundary between public and private activities. This study focuses on a potential hybrid research group: an academic group that sought to fuse its research with potential business activity within an ordinary university department. Controversies over four distinct issues arose: 1) the bureaucratic authority of a department chairman, 2) the allocation of teaching loads, 3) the ownership of research tools and materials and 4) the intellectual property rights of the researchers. Ultimately, the controversy was resolved through a formal written contract that established two boundaries: a border between the social roles of university researchers and those of private entrepreneurs, and a physical separation of the work done by academic projects from that of corporate development. As a result, the hybrid research group/firm was ‘purified’ into a private entity with no direct ties to the university.

This article studies the learning and capability formation of a biotechnology fi rm 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 signifi cance 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. Key Words: competencies; epistemology of things and effects; network collaboration; path formation; product development This article addresses two decades of competence development in a small biotechnology fi rm that produces reagents, enzymes and instruments for genetic engineering and research in the global biotechnology market. Competence development is analysed in terms of the formation of a path consisting of successive product-development projects accomplished by a fi rm with a partner or partners having complementary knowledge and resources. Each process leads

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.

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The main contribution of this paper for social studies of scienti c 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 scienti c research. For this, an analysis of object construction by a potato-biotechnolog y research group is presented. The group's object of activity is conceptualized as a dual one comprising both 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-resistanc e 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.

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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.