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patterned
development
along
‘technological
trajectories
’
that
it’s over
emphasized design heuristics
and
cognitive
rules
within
firms,
whilst
underemphasizing technology embed in society
(Nelson and Winter, 1982 Claimed in Geels, 2002).
Cognitive routines make engineers and designers look
in particular directions and not in others.
Competencies, skills and knowledge represented on a
kind of ‘cognitive capital’ with
sunken investments
(Geels and Schot, 2007). Rip and Kemp (1998) defined
a socio-technical regime as
“a technological regime is the rule
-set or
grammar embedded in a complex of
engineering practices, production process
technologies, product characteristics, skills
and procedures, ways of handling relevant
artifacts and persons, ways of defining
problems
–
all of them embedded in
institutions and infrastructures. Regimes are
intermediaries between specific innovations
as these are conceived, developed and
introduced, and overall socio-technical
landscapes.”
These rules not exist individually, but are linked
together in semi-coherent sets of rules. The rules
consist of search heuristics and may include problem
agendas, guiding principles, standards, government
regulations (Geels, F.W. and R.K., 2007). Social
networks referred to scientists, policy makers, users,
and special interest groups also contribute to patterning
of technological development, interact and form
networks with mutual dependencies, resulting in the
alignment of activities. Socio-technical regimes
incorporated the production, distribution, use and
regulation of technology (Geels, 2007). Actors in social
groups do not act autonomously but in the context of
social structures and regulative, normative and
cognitive rules (Geels and R.K., 2007). This can make
them ‘blind’ to developments
outside their focus.
Socio-technical regime account for the stability of
existing socio-technical systems and established
systems are stabilized by roles, routines, thinking
methods, practicing of actors and they guide the
innovative activity towards incremental improvements
along trajectories (Geels, 2002; Geels, 2004). Systems
are also stabilized because people adopt their lifestyles
to them, because favorable institutional arrangements
and formal regulations have been created, and
accompanying infrastructures are set up (Geels and
R.K., 2007). Transitions in socio-technical regimes are
situated at the level of organizational fields, in the
aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional
life: key suppliers, resource and product consumers,
regulatory agencies, and other organizations that
produce similar services or products. The virtue of this
unit of analysis is that it directs our attention not
simply to competing firms or to networks of
organizations that actually interact but to the totality of
relevant actors (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983 Claimed
in Geels and Schot, 2007).
Technological niches are the complementary
elements of regimes in the multi-level where radical
novelties emerge,
function as ‘proto
-
markets’ when
market demand is not yet present, represent the local
level of the innovation process, carried and developed
by small networks of dedicated actors, provide space to
build social network which support innovation, provide
articulation of expectations in location for learning
process that occurred in varieties dimension, often
outsiders or fringe actors. Technological and small
market niches have two dimensions emphasized in
different disciplines: ecological and socio-cognitive.
These novelties are initially unstable socio-technical
configurations with low performance, act as
‘incubation rooms’ protecting novelties against
mainstream market selection, shielding new
technologies from mainstream market selection (Schot,
1998; Kemp et al., 1998 Claimed in Geels and Schot,
2007; Geels, 2005; Verbong and Geels, 2007).
Protection can be understood as a selective exposure to
the selection environment, Public authorities or other
actors give the protection in the form of subsidies for
products, funding for experimental introduction
projects and preferential treatment for users of the new
technologies, within the legal framework (Raven,
2005), actors in niche are willing to support and invest
in niches because they have certain expectations about
possible futures (Geels, 2004). Technological niches
and sociotechnical regimes are similar kinds of
structures, both niches and regimes have the character
of organizational fields, although different in size and
stability (Geels and Schot, 2007). Within niches, rules
and social networks will be both less clear and more
uncertain than in established regimes and it is likely
that, due to mismatches with existing regimes, radical
new socio-technical systems cannot easily break
through.
To understand differentiation of individual
experiments and niche, Raven (2005) reported to the
distinction between individual experiments and niches
is not always clear in Strategic Niche Management;
SNM, Single experiments do not result in regime
changes; they require a long trajectory of many
experiments and the emergence and stabilization of a
niche level. The sociological dimension emphasizes the
distinction between experiments, niches and regimes
on the basis of stability and structuration. Experiments
are local practices in which actors are learning under
local circumstances. In niches, there is limited stability
in rules; uncertainty about future directions.
Structuration for local practices in experiments is
therefore limited. Nevertheless, actors that participate
in experiments can draw from experiences in other
locations, e.g. because actors have codified their
experiences in reports or because some actors have
participated in several experiments.
According to Deuten (2003) the process of emerging
stability and structuration can be understood as a four
processing phase of cosmopolitanisation. Firstly,
local
phase
; there is a heterogeneous set of relatively
