Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Knowledge ...

Alexander K. K<strong>of</strong>inas and Abdallah Al-Shawakbeh
comfortable with computer science. Such people were rare within <strong>the</strong> pharmaceutical companies <strong>of</strong>
<strong>the</strong> early 1990s and even now <strong>the</strong> early 21 st century. Internet-based genomics libraries such as
Incyte, or <strong>the</strong> publicly held ENSembl, electronic laboratory notebooks (Grieff, 2003), and o<strong>the</strong>r
informatics tools have facilitated innovation in <strong>the</strong> pharmaceutical R&D processes that would have
been unthinkable fifteen years ago but now <strong>the</strong> established everyday reality <strong>of</strong> pharmaceutical R&D
(Lerer and Piper, 2003, McMeekin and Harvey, 2002, Greco, 2007). This formation <strong>of</strong> new
organizational structures (Schmid and Smith, 2004, Ward, 2004, Studt, 2003) and network
arrangements intra- and inter-organizationally (Estades and Ramani, 1998, Kreiner and Schultz,
1993, Lerner and Merges, 1998) as a response to this new technology is an investment strategy that
is observed in times <strong>of</strong> extreme volatility and high risk (Nooteboom, 2002, Prabhu, 1999).
I am going to suggest in this paper with <strong>the</strong> help <strong>of</strong> a case study that <strong>the</strong> creation <strong>of</strong> bio-informatics as
a separate discipline has been a business and a political innovation ra<strong>the</strong>r than a technological
innovation. The new discipline allowed under its guise entrepreneurial teams <strong>of</strong> IT/biology
practitioners to usurp a conceptual vacuum where <strong>the</strong> bio-informaticians created <strong>the</strong> right capacities
within <strong>the</strong>ir corresponding pharmaceutical companies that allowed for <strong>the</strong> absorption <strong>of</strong> new
knowledge (Anyanwu, 2006, Datamonitor, 2004, Fodor, 2004, Katz and H<strong>of</strong>man, 2005, McMeekin
and Harvey, 2002, Ouzounis and Valencia, 2003).
This paper relies on actor-network <strong>the</strong>ory (ANT) (Doolin and Lowe, 2002, Elbanna, 2007, Latour,
1999a) as an interpretation lens to argue that <strong>the</strong> creation and interpretation <strong>of</strong> bio-informatics as a
separate discipline different from past pharmaceutical research practices during <strong>the</strong> 1990s is a
symbolic innovation on its own right. The <strong>the</strong>sis examined here is that PharmaCo, an established
company, created a symbolical organisational space that allowed for <strong>the</strong> deployment <strong>of</strong> new tools and
knowledge in order to absorb <strong>the</strong> new knowledge. The PharmaCo case study will illustrate <strong>the</strong>
complex reality <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> actor-networks that are mobilized within <strong>the</strong> company to meet <strong>the</strong> external
challenges and to absorb new knowledge. The remainder <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> literature review demonstrates <strong>the</strong>
power <strong>of</strong> actor network <strong>the</strong>ory (ANT) in explaining processes that would be relevant for <strong>the</strong> creation <strong>of</strong>
<strong>the</strong> bio-informatics department; <strong>the</strong> second section operationalizes <strong>the</strong> suggested framework within
<strong>the</strong> context <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> case study while <strong>the</strong> last section discusses <strong>the</strong> findings and <strong>the</strong> tentative
conclusions from this case study.
1.2 Social & Philosophical Underpinnings: Actor-Network Theory
Gronevetter’s seminal article on social networks (Granovetter, 1973) did much to popularise <strong>the</strong> main
concepts behind social network <strong>the</strong>ories. Most <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> empirical body on social networks has been
traditionally quantitative (Abrahamson and Rosenkopf, 1997, Hedstrom, 1994, Lemarie et al., 2001,
Yli-Renko et al., 2001). Social networks could be egocentric or closed systems. A closed system
means that <strong>the</strong> group we are investigating is enclosed within certain boundaries and <strong>the</strong> number <strong>of</strong>
actors is finite while an egocentric puts <strong>the</strong> main actors in <strong>the</strong> centre and we expand <strong>the</strong> network
tracking <strong>the</strong> relationships as <strong>the</strong>y develop from <strong>the</strong> centre (Wasserman and Faust, 1994). Analysis <strong>of</strong>
social networks can pinpoint issues within <strong>the</strong> social network such as information bottlenecks, points
<strong>of</strong> boundary transcendence where knowledge is transferred and points <strong>of</strong> boundary breakdown or
rigidity (Cross et al., 2003) that may highlight organisational trouble-spots.
Actor-network <strong>the</strong>ory is <strong>the</strong> chosen network <strong>the</strong>ory for this case study. Bruno Latour, one <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>
founders <strong>of</strong> Actor-Network Theory (ANT), once stated “<strong>the</strong>re are four things that do not work with
actor-network <strong>the</strong>ory; <strong>the</strong> word actor, <strong>the</strong> word network, <strong>the</strong> word <strong>the</strong>ory and <strong>the</strong> hyphen!”(Latour,
1999a). Actors in ANT are presented to have <strong>the</strong>ir own reality, an essence that seems to defy
explanation. This is <strong>the</strong> principle <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> in-determinability <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> actors (Latour, 1999a, Latour, 1993,
Callon, 1999); <strong>the</strong> actors can only be described via <strong>the</strong>ir networks, <strong>the</strong> emphasis firmly on <strong>the</strong> second
part <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> composite word; <strong>the</strong> work (Green et al., 1999, Latour, 1999a). For ANT <strong>the</strong>orists any entity
with a physical reality is an actor, whe<strong>the</strong>r human or non-human (Green et al., 1999). The emphasis
on non-human actors contrasts that <strong>of</strong> many o<strong>the</strong>r network <strong>the</strong>orists who focus mainly on human
social networks (Pan and Leidner, 2003, Hayes and Walsham, 2003). The hyphen between actors
and networks denotes <strong>the</strong> inherent conflict as actors work on <strong>the</strong> environment wittingly or unwittingly
and come in friction and conflict with <strong>the</strong> networks formed (Law, 1999). The word <strong>the</strong>ory is equally
problematic (Latour, 2004, Latour, 1999a, Latour, 1999b). For Latour ANT should be thought <strong>of</strong> as a
possible representation <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> world (Latour, 2003). Thus ANT is denied prescriptive powers in its
<strong>the</strong>oretical body.
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