Table Of ContentRoutledge Studies in Management, Organizations and Society
CORPORATE RESEARCH
LABORATORIES AND THE
HISTORY OF INNOVATION
David M. Pithan
Corporate Research Laboratories
and the History of Innovation
At the beginning of the twentieth century, American corporations in the
chemical and electrical industries began establishing industrial research
laboratories. Some went on to become world-famous not only for their
scientific and technological breakthroughs but also for the new union of
science and industry they represented. Innovative ideas do not simply
appear out of the blue and spread on their own merit. Rather, the
laboratory’s diffusion takes place in a cultural context that goes beyond
corporate capital and technological change.
Using discourse analysis as a method to comprehensively capture the
organizational field of the early American R&D laboratories from 1870 to
1930, this book uncovers the collective meanings associated with the
industrial laboratory. Meanings such as what and where a laboratory is
supposed to be, who the scientist is, and what it means to practice science
provided cultural resources that made the transfer of the laboratory from
academic science into an industrial setting possible by rendering such
meanings understandable and operable to big business and organizational
entrepreneurs fighting for hegemony in a rapidly evolving market. It
analyzes not only the corporations that established laboratories in the
United States but also their contexts – economic, political, and especially
scientific – showing how “the industrial laboratory” was transformed
from an organizational novelty into an expected institution in less than
two decades.
This book will be of interest to researchers, academics, historians, and
students in the fields of organizational change, discourse studies, the
management of technology and innovation, as well as business and
management history.
David M. Pithan is a Programme Officer for Strategy and Policy at the
German Research Foundation.
Routledge Studies in Management, Organizations
and Society
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Recent titles in this series include:
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Dennis N. Onyama
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David M. Pithan
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Edited by Ricardo Chiva
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Corporate Research
Laboratories and the
History of Innovation
David M. Pithan
First published 2022
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
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© 2022 Taylor & Francis
The right of David M. Pithan to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-47660-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-53840-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-08347-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations x
1 Introduction 1
2 Theory 5
Diffusion of Innovations 5
Idea Translation in Organizational Fields 12
Making the Case for Discourse 20
The Gist of It 28
3 The Innovation: Industrial Research Laboratory 32
Where It Originated from 32
How It Proliferated 37
The Research Pioneers 46
Preliminary Findings from the Research Pioneers 75
4 The Organizational Field: US Chemistry, 1870–1930 87
Chemistry as Academic Science: Scientific Societies,
Journals, and Chemical Education 88
Chemistry in Industry: Companies, Products, and
Processes 99
Chemistry and Politics: WWI, Boosterism and the New
Landscape of Federal Support for Science 106
vi Contents
5 Capturing the Discourse about Industrial Research in
US Chemistry, 1870–1930 117
Methodological Considerations 117
Dataset Overview 124
An Event-Based Analysis 130
On Quality Control in Discourse Analysis 140
6 Analyzing the Discourse 145
Interdiscursivity 148
Concepts 166
Objects 177
Subject Positions 186
Summarizing Results 202
7 Discussion and Conclusions 208
Summary 208
Discussion 220
References 229
Index 262
List of Illustrations
Figures
3.1 Laboratories Founded By Year, 1890–1940 41
3.2 Cumulative Growth of Industrial Research
Laboratories, 1890–1940 42
3.3 Total Staff Growth 43
3.4 Staff by Scientific Disciplines Employed in Laboratories,
1921–1938 44
4.1 Annual Membership of the ACS, 1876–1930 91
4.2 Bachelors, Second-Level Degrees, PhDs in Chemistry,
1890–1930 98
4.3 Bachelors, Second-Level Degrees, PhDs in Chemistry as
Percentage of All Degree Conferrals, 1890–1930 98
4.4 Number of Chemical Establishments, 1870–1930 100
4.5 Outputs of Chemical and All Manufacturing Industries,
1899–1929 (Base Year: 1929) 101
4.6 Capital Investment in the Chemical Industries and
in Total Manufacturing, 1879–1929 102
4.7 Average Number of Wage Earners & Census Chemists,
1870–1930 103
4.8 Chemists in Federal Government, 1879–1930 106
5.1 Dataset Overview, 1870–1930 124
5.2 Number of Articles per Speaker Group and Event 135
6.1 Percentage of Texts Referring to Certain Discourses 154
Tables
3.1 Overview Pioneering Laboratories 71
4.1 Foundations of Chemistry-Related Scientific Societies
and Other Professional Associations, 1870–1930 89
4.2 Specialty Divisions of the American Chemical Society,
1870–1930 91
4.3 US Chemical Journals, 1870–1930 95
viii List of Illustrations
4.4 Foundations of Trade Associations and Other
Professional Organizations, 1870–1930 104
4.5 Foundations of Governmental Organizations Related to
Chemistry, 1870–1930 108
5.1 Search Terms Used for Corpus Assembly 123
5.2 Dataset Overview 125
5.3 Discursive Events 132
6.1 Overview of Results 149
Acknowledgments
This book is a revised and streamlined version of my PhD thesis. First and
foremost, I would like to thank my PhD advisor, Thomas Heinze, who
supported me throughout all the stages of this project. Further thanks for
all the support I received from the team of Organizational Sociology at
Wuppertal University, namely Steffi Heinecke, Sabrina Petersohn, Olof
Hallonsten, Arlette Jappe, Dennis Köthemann, and Joschka Baum.
Thanks to the kind and helpful staff at the Science History Institute
(Philadelphia, PA), at the Hagley Museum and Library (Wilmington,
DE), as well as at the Kodak archives at the University of Rochester and
the George Eastman Museum (Rochester, NY), for opening the gates of
their archives for me and my project.
I am very grateful for countless critical and inspirational discussions with
my colleagues at the Institute of Sociology and the Interdisciplinary Centre
for Science and Technology (IZWT), both at Wuppertal University, especially
Elena Kunadt, Julia Heuer, Aytüre Türkyilmaz, Miriam Böttner, and Roman
Pauli.
Lastly, thanks to my family and friends for supporting me throughout
the way, and a very special thanks to those who proofread, sat with me
through long brainstorming sessions, and helped me figure things out:
Michael Rose, Vincent Gengnagel, Heiner Heiland, and Andreas Kallert.
