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The recent rapprochement between management studies and studies of science and technology recreated an interest in management studies. This chapter presents examples showing that the role of things in management is complex. Managers try to defend themselves from the insubordination of technical and material things, and they spend much time applying quasi-objects such as managerial technologies to mediate the fate of technical or material objects. Much effort is also dedicated to turning people into objects, which permits the use of procedures of insulation and control on them. The chapter concludes that in exercising management, managers avoid certain material objects but make use of quasi-objects such as accounting systems and management technologies in order to make the world (i.e. organization, public agency, or firm) more interventionable or manageable, and yet they also create new uncertainties in the process.

This chapter first considers challenges to the ‘Japanese (productionist) model’ in the 1990s, particularly successful emulation of features of the Japanese model by competitors, and the emergence of new competitive models by specialized firms adopting modularization. Concern about these challenges and responses fed into the MOT (management of technology) movement at the turn of the century. The authors discuss the MOT Consortium, University-Industry-Policy Maker Summits, and monozukuri (productionist) initiatives, which seek to reshape the Japanese innovation system. They note that even fads can produce lasting and unanticipated change, as seen in the US quality movement of the 1980s. This discussion sets the stage for the following chapters, which are then summarized individually.

Explores the links between a firm, region, or nation's production capabilities and productivity. Productivity is explained in terms of fundamental principles of production that underlie the organizational design of business enterprises and production systems. Industrial development, and enhanced competitiveness, is about making the transition to more advanced principles of production and associated levels of production capabilities. A ten‐scale production capabilities spectrum is presented to identify both where a firm or a region's firms fit in the world economy and the specific and critical challenges and opportunities to increased industrial productivity. The evolution of production principles and capabilities is illustrated with five examples of enterprises that established industrial leadership by the application of an enduring production principle: the American System of Manufacture and the principle of interchangeability; Ford and the principle of single‐product flow or mass production; Toyota and multi‐product flow or JIT; Canon and multi‐product flow applied to new product development; and Intel and systems integration.

A central claim is that technology management is a powerful policy tool for growth of firms, regions, and nations at every level of industrial development. The capabilities perspective focuses policy‐making attention on long‐term strategies and organizational change methodologies in the three interrelated domains of the productivity triad. In the business model domain, priority goes to supporting new firm creation, open networks, and high‐performance work systems (HPWSs). The Asian Miracle economies that have achieved high rates of growth developed a critical mass of enterprises with the production capabilities to adopt, adapt, and diffuse technologies that originated in the most technologically advanced regions. The challenge in the domain of skill formation is to link visible and invisible colleges, administer the R&D infrastructure, and anticipate technology transitions with manpower development programs. Finally, the mutual adjustment feature of the productivity triad calls attention to the role of policy alignment across the three domains.

This chapter highlights the regulatory power of a ‘soft’ mechanism, namely communities of expertise. It draws on an in-depth case study of the evolution of governance at Rolls-Royce. The study demonstrates how a strong and stable community of engineers, with extensive rights in resource allocation decision-making, has been central in sustaining growth, accumulation of experience and technical excellence, throughout the long history of the firm, a history marked by frequent changes in ownership structures and board composition. In other words, an informally governed horizontal organization, oriented to technical objectives and somehow decoupled from the financial objectives and structure of the firm, turned out to be compatible, if not complementary, with a variety of proprietary arrangements.

This chapter discusses the main theme of this book, namely the redefinition of the agenda of information systems design, development, and management. It suggests that the information systems field — with its rational views of knowledge, decision making, strategy, and orderly systems development — is based on a narrow model of rational, ideal actors. Passion and improvisation; moods and bricolage; emotions and workaday chores; existence and procedures will become integral to systems design and use, casting new shadows and lights on the unfolding world of technology.

The theme of the chapter is that technology management can play a major role in fostering economic growth and a healthy environment. The capabilities and innovation perspective counters the assumption of an environment/growth trade‐off with the principle of design for sustainability. The goal is to design products, processes, materials, and technologies according to the criterion of waste‐free production. The design of product systems, such as energy, transportation, and health, are a consequence of past and present technology R&D choices and corresponding investments in technical education. A technology management policy informed by the environmental principle of design for sustainability would foster R&D in, for example, renewable energy, biodegradable polymers, and recyclability.

The most important objective for IT management is to be architects of alignment, linking business and IT. Achieving alignment requires conscious attention by IT and functional management to enhance the enablers of alignment. The alignment process must focus on all six strategic alignment maturity assessment criteria to be effective.

Technology entrepreneurship—and, by extension, technology strategy—is the study of how firms use technology to create and capture value. While this area draws on multiple domains, including literatures describing the evolution of technology, firms, and industries, few dedicated efforts have been made to integrate these domains to describe technology strategy, even though many of the most powerful firms today are not those with industry or resource positions but those with technology positions. This chapter unpacks the theoretical and empirical foundations of technology entrepreneurship as it relates to strategy, summarizes current research, and highlights important unanswered questions, foremost of which is the role of uncertainty in theories of strategy. This chapter also asks two important questions: Given the growing centrality of technology in almost every area of economic life, is a technology strategy view needed? Also, given the rise of uncertainty, is a theory of uncertainty also necessary?

This study shows how, between 1661 and 1683, the culture of double-entry, mercantile accounting was central to Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s massive project of royal archive building in ancient régime France. Scholars have tended to see state archives as the products of learned and legal culture. The case of Colbert demonstrates that mercantile culture and commerce also made an essential contribution to archival development in the early modern period, as well as laying the foundation for state sponsored learning, science, industry, art, building, and administration. It illustrates how economic interest and financial management drove archive formation and organisation in the early modern era, correcting the dominant emphasis on techniques derived from scholarship.

This chapter contains an efficiency analysis for Indian industry from 1950–51 to 2013–14. Overall, there had been consistent growth in manufacturing employment over six decades, though by the 2010s only 13 million persons, or 0.1% of the population, had industrial jobs. Capital widening and deepening in India was substantial. In the 1950s, productive efficiency was high. In the 1960s, average productive efficiency declined sharply. In the 1970s, productive efficiency declined and stagnated till the 1980s when it started rising again. In the 1990s, productive efficiency rose and efficiency patterns were stable till the late 2010s when decline set in. Productive efficiency began a downward trend in the 2010s. In spite of capital widening and deepening, Indian industry was inept at managing technology. Indian industry has not possessed the competence to handle the knowledge embodied in fixed capital inputs, which is a hallmark of modern economies.

Sustainability and social justice remain elusive, even as it has become increasingly clear that each is unattainable without the other. Unsustainable practices diminish social justice: the effects of animal extinctions, toxic waste, and air pollution alike have fallen disproportionately on the poor. Meanwhile, efforts at achieving sustainability in the industrialized West and Global South have often aggravated social inequities, such as when indigenous people have been displaced to create wildlife or natural reserves or when governments have mandated expensive new environmental management technologies that exacerbate the burden of the poor. One result is that sustainability is sometimes perceived as an elite, technologically driven project in an increasingly diverse world, and opposition to environmental reform finds a solid footing among the expanding ranks of the world’s working and impoverished peoples. This book seeks to answer some of the contemporary challenges facing sustainability from a social science perspective.

This chapter examines the paradoxical effects of transnational organic coffee certification processes on service workers in Oaxaca, Mexico. It focuses on the service workers’ role of accommodating their local “agri-cultural” practices according to the transnational certification standards. Aspects of certified agricultures monitoring, including audit chain practices and management technologies, are discussed, as are advantages of certified agricultural production, including better livelihoods for farmers and skill development for the workforce. A case study from the coffee producers’ confederation of Oaxaca, Mexico presents paradoxes of product certification, including structural contradictions in the certification procedures and the impact of the procedure on the performances of service workers.