MEANING MECHANISMS IN NANOTECHNOLOGY: CONTRACTION AND EXPANSION OF EMERGING

FIELD LABELS

STINE GRODALSchool of Management

Boston UniversityBoston, MA, 02215

617-353-5617grodal@bu.edu

October 2010

Draft: Please do not cite or circulate without the author’s permission

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Stephen R. Barley, Walter W. Powell, Chip Heath, Siobhan O’Mahony, participants at the 2009 UC Davis Conference on Qualitative Research, the 2010 EGOS conference, and the 2010 AoM conference for their valuable comments on this paper. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES-0531146

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ABSTRACT

Meaning is a central concept in theories of organizational fields. In the literature examples abound of both meaning contraction and expansion over the course of a field’s development, but the mechanisms which facilitate this change are still uninvestigated. I address this gap in the literature through an in-depth longitudinal study of the emerging nanotechnology field during the period 1984-2005. I show that the meaning of nanotechnology expanded over time and identify five meaning mechanisms which account for this change. I further theorize that in other fields the strength among the mechanisms will differ, and that the mechanisms thus are able to account for variances across fields. Finally, I discuss how the expansion and contraction mechanisms place the locus of institutional change within the mundane everyday actions of regular field participants and debate how this adds to our understanding of the sharpening and blurring of symbolic boundaries.

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INTRODUCTION

The change in the meaning of nanotechnology is a little bit like the definition of pornography in the sense that not only does the definition change but the environment around us changes as well, right? So what we called pornography in the 1950s is sort of major advertisements in The New York Times today, right? – Pam Gilbert, journalist at technology magazine

A shared understanding among participants of the core products, members and

governance rules enables fields and markets to function (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Leblebici

1991; Meyer and Rowan 1977; Porac et al. 1995). Empirically studies have corroborated this

theoretical insight by demonstrating that a change in meaning can impact executive succession

(Thornton 2004), outsourcing decisions (Lounsbury 2007), and innovation (Rao, Monin and

Durand 2005). Emerging fields are fragile social systems as they are characterized by an unclear

meaning system (Aldrich and Fiol 1994; Alvesson 1990), resulting in ambivalent market

boundaries (Santos and Eisenhardt 2009) a lack of schemas and scripts about products (Hargadon

and Douglas 2001) and inadequate institutional logics to coordinate action (Kaplan and Tripsas

2008). Meaning construction is, therefore, particularly important during the emergence of a field

as early understandings directs a fields’ trajectory and can spur either its success or demise

(Bijker, Hughes and Pinch 1987; David 1985). Some studies have examined the process of

institutional change during field emergence, yet they have tended to focus on practices

(Greenwood and Suddaby 2006; Leblebici 1991) or structure (Powell, Koput and Smith-Doerr

1996), while taking for granted the underlying change in meaning (Mohr 2006).

Even though meaning is core to theories of organizational fields it has been empirically

understudied (Mohr 2006) as most studies have tended to assume the construction of field level

meaning or has addressed meaning descriptively rather than by focusing on the dynamic aspects

of meaning construction (Benford and Snow 2000; Schneiberg and Clemens 2006). The few

studies that have addressed change in meaning have primarily focused on the role of institutional

entrepreneurs in shaping and promoting change (Battilana, Leca and Boxenbaum 2009; Fligstein

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2001b; Greenwood and Suddaby 2006; Suddaby and Greenwood 2005). Yet, the emphasis on

institutional entrepreneurs have tended to be overly agentic thereby overlooking the changes that

occur through the everyday actions of field participants. This has led Powell and Colyvas (2008)

to call for studies that “stress that most micro-motives are fairly mundane, aimed at interpretation,

alignment, and muddling through”. There is, thus, a gap in the literature regarding the micro-

mechanisms which influence the construction of meaning within emerging organizational fields.

In particular a core question in understanding how meaning changes within emerging

fields is the study of coherence and heterogeneity of a field’s meaning (Schneiberg and Clemens

2006), that is a fields tendency to encompass either a decreased or increased diversity of ideas

and definitions over time. This development is closely related the meaning of a field’s propensity

to contract or expand, as meaning expansion enables a greater diversity to exist within fields,

while contraction enables less diversity. Within the literature there are abundant examples of

both meaning contraction (Pinch and Bijker 1989; Rosa and Porac 2002; Utterback 1994) and

meaning expansion (Benford and Snow 2000; Sinaceur, Heath and Cole 2003; Zbaracki 1998)

generating the puzzle of why meaning in emerging organizational fields sometimes expands and

at other times contracts? This puzzle has led Schneiberg and Clemens (2006) to point out that we

lack “fine-grained analysis of meanings” in order to understand both coherence and the relative

incoherence of meaning. The research question that I am going to address in this paper is thus:

What are the mechanisms that influence the contraction or expansion of meaning in emerging

organizational fields?

I address this question through an in-depth longitudinal study of the emerging

nanotechnology field from 1984-2005. The nanotechnology field is particularly appropriate for

the study of meaning as it is still emerging which enabled the real time collection of data devoid

of retrospective bias and unintentional reconstruction of meaning. The problem with studying

meaning in a mature field is that participants easily reconstruct the past in the face of recent

events (Ventresca and Mohr 2002). I designed my study in order to capture the meaning of

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nanotechnology from many different perspectives by collecting data from several communities

involved with the field. Drawing on 25 ethnographic observations at nanotechnology

conferences, 77 interviews with nanotechnology participants and a large archival material

covering the period 1984-2005 I develop a framework for how meaning changed within the

nanotechnology field.

My research contributes in multiple ways to our understanding of meaning in emerging

fields. First, I identify three mechanisms, renaming, labeling, and brokering through which

meaning expands. Second, I find two mechanisms, defining and policing, through which

meaning contracts. I further identify two boundary mechanisms, capital and decoupling, which

combined with community involvement changes the strength of the mechanisms. Together these

mechanisms form a coherent framework for understanding the contraction and expansion of

meaning in emerging organizational fields. I finally by linking this framework to the temporal

development of the nanotechnology field develop a process model for the expansion and

contraction of meaning within emerging organizational fields.

By specifying this framework my paper adds to our understanding of how meaning

evolves in organizational fields, and thus by extension also to the central dynamics that drive

institutional change. This paper expands our understanding of how participants within a field

through their everyday activities produce and maintain meaning systems. This view departs from

existing theories of institutional change that have tended to emphasize institutional entrepreneurs

or structural factors in shaping change. This paper also adds to our understanding of how

symbolic boundaries are sharpened or blurred as the expanding mechanisms enables the

movement of symbols and labels across boundaries, whereas the contracting mechanisms

maintain boundaries.

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THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEANING WITHIN NASCENT FIELDS

Meaning as the Foundation of Organizational Fields

Organizational fields are defined as “those organizations that, in aggregate, constitute a

recognized area of institutional life: key suppliers, resources and product consumers, regulatory

agencies, and other organizations that produce similar services or products” (DiMaggio and

Powell 1983 p. 64-65). More plainly a field consists of communities whose members share the

same social, political, or economic interests. The meaning of a field is socially constructed

through negotiation between the involved communities (Berger and Luckmann 1967; Bruner

1990). Multiple meanings often exist simultaneously within the communities, some of which

might be decoupled or loosely coupled (March 1962). Different community members might play

varying roles in the construction of meaning. For example Glynn and Lounsbury (2005) show

that critics play an important role in shaping the categorical meaning structure around orchestras,

whereas Maitlis (2005) emphasize how orchestra managers and orchestra participants form

different meaning structures.

Recent studies have shown how interpretive processes influence the functioning of fields

and markets (Lounsbury, Ventresca and Hirsch 2003; Porac, Ventresca and Mishina 2002; Rosa

et al. 1999). In particular studies of industry cognition (Hodgkinson 1994; Hodgkinson 1997;

Phillips 1994; Porac et al. 1995; Rosa and Porac 2002; Urban, Hullard and Weinberg 1993), field

frames (Hoffman and Ventresca 1999; Lounsbury and Glynn 2001; Lounsbury, Ventresca and

Hirsch 2003) and changes in institutional logics (Friedland and Alford 1991; Thornton and

Ocasio 1999) shed light on how the construction or change in meaning alters the functioning of a

field by changing both the institutional structures and the power that participants have within the

field (Lawrence and Phillips 2004; Thornton, Jones and Kury 2005). Yet, while these studies

show that changes in meaning affect the functioning of fields they still lack an explanation of how

meaning changes within fields.

The construction of meaning is most vibrant in the earliest period of an

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organizational field (Markel and Robin 1985; Rao 1994). Before shared understanding is

established conversations and the exchange of information within and between communities are

constantly disrupted by miscommunications and misunderstandings. During this early period

there is confusion about roles, participants, markets, and boundaries of the field. In the early

period of the automobile industry there was for example ambiguity about what defined an

automobile: “The automobile per se was unfamiliar to prospective consumers and putative

investors. Consumers were confused because the source of power, the number of cylinders,

systems of steering and control, and the mode to stopping were topics of considerable

controversy. The only point of agreement about the automobile was that it could not be powered

by animals” (Rao 1994 p. 33).

Labels as the Foundation of Meaning Construction

The meaning of a field can be conceptualized as the connotations and denotations associated with

a field’s label (Barley 1983). The denotations of a label is the categorical reference associated

with the label, and the connotations is the broader meaning structure associated with a label

(Pierce 1931). For example the denotations associated with the label “biotechnology” are the

organizations and technologies that the label reference like “Genetech” and “gene-splitting”. The

connotations on the contrary are a larger web of meaning that the biotechnology label references

like “high-technology”, “biology” and “medicine”.

Assigning a label to a field is one of the first events that infuse meaning to a field

(Hannan, Polos and Carroll 2007). A label is a term for categorizing a person, group, or

organization on the basis of actual or perceived similarities. Labels are significant cultural

symbols in that they associate an object with a system of meaning consisting of its denotation (or

explicit meaning) and connotation (or implicit meaning) (Pierce 1931). Labels are a focal

analytical unit for analyzing the web of signs, which constitutes the meaning of a field (Petrilli

and Ponzio 2005). The connotation of a label is the web of signs that are associated with the label

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(Petrilli and Ponzio 2005). As participants use signs to denote an object (physical or linguistic)

they create associations between the sign and the web of signs that are already associated with the

object (Eco 1976; Petrilli and Ponzio 2005).

Labels are important aspects of fields because they create reference points for

communities inside and outside the organizational field (Glynn and Abzug 2002). Labels

facilitate communication across community and cultural boundaries (Galison 1997).

Experiments have shown that the creation of a shared label enable people to exchange more

information and to do so more quickly (Clark and Wilkes-Biggs 1986). Labels also allow

communities to organize, since by adopting labels they obtain a shared identity and establish

authority within the created social structure (White 1992).

Using a label is an act of meaning attribution (Vygotsky 1987). By denoting

technologies, organizations, and persons as belonging to a label its connotations are created and

changed. For example, after it was created the label “biotechnology” became used to recategorize

existing researchers, companies and service providers in biology and biochemistry as denotations

of the new category. The label “biotechnology” initially merely connoted a field focused on

manipulating biological organisms for industrial purposes (Markel and Robin 1985). Over time

the label primarily became used to denote technologies and companies engaged in human

therapeutics thus the connotations changed to emphasize manipulating biological organisms for

human therapeutics. Other kinds of biotechnology began to use a qualifying term like “plant

biotechnology” or became categorized within a completely different industry category like

“energy” or “agricultural products” (Plein 1991).

Expansion and Contraction of Meaning

Meaning is not stationary, but changes over time (Merton and Barber 2004). One particular

mechanism, which drives change, is when labels move into new domains and are interpreted by

new actors (Carlile 2004). For example, Sinaceur, Heath and Cole (2003) show that scientific

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descriptions of “mad cow disease”, were reinterpreted by the news media and the general

populations and attached to stronger emotional language than when the disease was describe in

the scientific literature.

One element of a field’s meaning is that it can either expand or contract that is a field’s label

can either begin to denote more elements or it can begin to denote fewer elements. This process

is closely related to the tendency of fields to either cohere or diverge (Schneiberg and Clemens

2006). In particular the literature shows examples both of field labels that expand and field labels

that contract (Colyvas 2007; Suarez and Utterback 1995).

Contraction of meaning. Studies on the emergence and evolution of technologies suggest that

meaning becomes solidified around a dominant design (Suarez and Utterback 1995; Utterback

1994). For example a dominant design of the bicycle emerged through a socially negotiated

process, which involved both users and producers (Pinch and Bijker 1989). Initially multiple

meanings existed around the bicycle, but over time bicycle designs’ converged around the “safety

bicycle”, and the bicycle became understood primarily as a transportational vehicle. Rosa et al.

(1999) show how initially multiple conceptions of a mix between a car and a truck existed, but

over time the negotiated meaning contracted around the concept of the “mini-van”. Contraction

does not only happen around a dominant design, but might also consist of generalized meaning

structures, which through translational process are transformed into more specific meanings

(Zilber 2006). This was for example the case when universities started to patent. Originally

broad and diffuse understandings existed about what it meant to patent, that is who should be an

inventor, how should a patent document be written, who should benefit from the potential

monetary rewards from the patent. Yet, over time university labs converged on a set of specific

practices and meanings associated with patenting (Colyvas 2007; Colyvas and Powell 2006).

Within the literature there are, thus, multiple examples of how the meaning of an emerging field

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became more specific over time. Yet, puzzling the literature also contains examples where the

meaning of emerging fields expanded.

Expansion of meaning. When examining the literature examples emerge where meaning became

broader over time. For example, Heath and Gould (2003) demonstrate that over time the usage of

words that express strong positive value have become more commonly used in comparison to

words that express less positive value. Words that have strong positive value have thus expanded

their meaning and become broader, thereby loosing some of their original connotations. Zabracki

(1998) demonstrate similar expansion processes as he shows how ideas can become disconnected

from their original meaning when they are implemented into organizational practices in particular

when rhetoric and reality are disconnected in organizations. Studies of the field of artificial

intelligence (AI) also report that the meaning of AI expanded over time. While the meaning of

AI initially only connoted the creation of a humanoid robot the term later began to be used to

describe most forms of computing that tried to replicate complicated and intelligent processes

(Crevier 1994). The concept of “microfinancing” experienced a similar expansion that took on

speed after Muhammed Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work with the

Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Whereas the term “micro-credit” originally meant credit “not

based on any collateral, or legally enforceable contracts” (Yunus 2003 p. 3), then the term micro-

finance have now come to mean anything from “mean agricultural credit, or rural credit, or

cooperative credit, or consumer credit, credit from the savings and loan associations, or from

credit unions, or from money lenders” (Yunus 2003 p. 1).

The most extensive work on the expansion of meaning has been done within the social

movement literature. Benford and Snow (2000) examine how the strategies used in social

movements to mobilize participates expand the original meanings with the implication the

meaning associated with the movement’s cause can become broader over time as new meanings

are included within the frame. Yet, this literature necessitates a core group of actors, who device

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a strategy for how to increase mobilization. The theory thus fails to explain how a change in

meaning can take place within broad groups of decentralized participants. Furthermore, the

theory does not embrace why we would sometimes expect meaning to contract.

Conclusively, within the literature there are both examples of how the meaning of a field

has contracted and how the meaning of a field has expanded. However, the literature still lays

open the puzzle of why meaning contracts in some fields while it expands in others? The goal of

this article is to investigate this puzzle and identify the underlying meaning mechanisms, which

might lead meaning to contract in one field and expand in another.

METHODS

Setting: The Emerging Nanotechnology Field

Inductive research is best done in settings where the phenomenon of interest occurs in abundance

(Garfinkle 1967). I chose to study the nascent nanotechnology field, because it was such an

extreme case, as nanotechnology underwent a dramatic change in meaning during its emergence

(Berube 2006). Furthermore, nanotechnology was still emerging at the time of data collection

thereby enabling real time collection of data on meaning construction and minimizing

retrospective bias. The need to avoid retrospective bias is particularly important when trying to

address thought processes and opinion formation because these constructs are easily influenced

and reconstructed to fit subsequent understandings (Lofland and Lofland 1995). Although one

might attempt to reconstruct processes of emergence in a mature industry by eliciting

retrospective recollections, such data are troublesome because informants might be biased by the

current state of the industry to misremember its infancy. In particular, they will have a tendency

to reframe historical events using modern rhetoric (Ventresca and Mohr 2002). To avoid

retrospective bias I relied on real time data, which comes in two types: data that researchers

collect as social action unfolds and data traces that actors leave behind as artifacts of past actions

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(Labov 1972). I further aimed to minimize retrospective bias by triangulating data from

ethnographic observations, interviews and archival data.

The definition of nanotechnology provided by the National Nanotechnology Initiative is that

nanotechnology is a technology that is between 1-100 nanometers (National Science and

Technology Council 2000). Yet, the extreme change over time in the definition of

nanotechnology is exactly the subject of this paper. Research in materials science, molecular

biology, chemistry and physics are converging around the manipulation of structures whose

dimensions are measured in atoms: a scale in the range of 1 to 100 nanometers (Smalley 2001).

Participants across all of these fields thus had the possibility to participate within the

nanotechnology field.

As with all fields, nanotechnology does not have a definitive founding date, and various

criteria for determining when the field began will lead to slightly different start dates. Research

in nanoscience within distinct disciplines like material science, physics and chemistry can be

traced back to the 1950s, but the major scientific breakthroughs that led to the advancement of

nanoscience happened in the early 1980s. It was also in the early 1980s that the nanotechnology

label was adopted and used by the first participants in the field.

The convergence between materials science, molecular biology, physics, and chemistry

was hastened by important inventions and discoveries. Two discoveries, in particular, spurred the

growth of research within this area – both were awarded the Nobel Prize. The first was the

development of the scanning tunneling microscope in 1982, by Gerd Binning and Heinrich

Rohrer, who worked at IBM’s Zurich lab. The second discovery was of the chemical structures

named ‘buckministerfullerenes’ in 19851. The invention of both the scanning tunneling

microscope and of buckministerfullerenes in the early 1980s makes this a pivotal time period for

the emergence of the nanotechnology field. More importantly, however, the early 1980s saw the

1 Buckministerfullerenes are also known as “buckyballs”, “fullerenes” or “C60”.

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creation of the nanotechnology label, and the first association was made between developments in

nanoscience and the nanotechnology label. An overview of key events within the emergence of

the nanotechnology field can be found in table 1. I will expand on the history of nanotechnology

throughout the remainder of this article.

-------------------------Insert table 1 about here--------------------------

Data Collection: Triangulation

It is appropriate to use a mixed method research design when some knowledge existed in a given

domain, but the process and mechanisms guiding the phenomenon are still unaccounted for

(Edmondson and McManus 2007). I thus collected data in three phases: 1) Ethnographic

observations, 2) interviews and archival data, and 3) collection of nanotechnology definitions in

the top 50 US Newspapers.

The first stage: Ethnographic observations. The first step in my data collection was to conduct

ethnographic observations at 25 nanotechnology conferences and networking events. All

conferences and networking events were focused on the commercialization of nanotechnology

and thus attracted participants from multiple communities. Conferences and networking events

are major field configuring events where participants actively discuss, contest and negotiate the

field’s meaning (Meyer, Gaba and Cowell 2005). Of special interest were conferences and

networking events that focused on the commercial aspects of nanotechnology. These events drew

participants from all of the communities, whereas the scientific conferences usually catered to a

single community. Contestation over meaning was thus particularly pertinent at

commercialization conferences. During the ethnographic observations I identified five main

communities that were involved in nanotechnology: futurists, the government, brokers,

companies, and scientists. The participants in the futurist community were affiliated with the

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Foresight Institute, which was the first organization whose main purpose was the development of

nanotechnology. Employees in congressional offices and government agencies, and people who

were appointed to government committees comprised the government community. Venture

capitalists, consultants and IP lawyers, who provided services to the other participants in the field,

comprised the broker community. The community of companies included representatives from

small and large as well as private and public firms. Researchers at universities and government

research facilities comprised the community of scientists.

The second stage: Interviews and archival material. The second step in my data collection was

to collect interviews with participants and archival material from each of the communities. I

conducted these two data collection processes simultaneously as they mutually reinforced each

other.

Interviews. An important part of data collection was interviews with representatives of the

communities. The interviews revealed how, when and why the representatives used or did not

use the nanotechnology label and their views on the meaning of nanotechnology now and in the

past. I attempted to capture differences in perspective and disagreements within communities by

talking to people with varying roles and experience in each community (see Spradley 1979). For

example, I made sure that I talked with people who had been long time members of the futurist

community as well as to people that had joined later. In the scientific community, I purposely

interviewed people from different scientific fields. My sample thus contains scientists who work

on everything from nano-photonics to nano-biotechnology to nanostructured semiconductor

devices. In total, I conducted 77 interviews. The interviews started with a set of open-ended

questions and progressed to free dialogue. The initial interviewees were approached at the

nanotechnology conferences and networking events or from nanotechnology directories and the

subsequent interviewees were identified using snowball sampling. The interviews were

conducted during 2003-2005. Table 2 displays the distribution among the different communities.

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-------------------------Insert table 2 about here--------------------------

Archival data. I relied on archival historical documents for relevant information on

nanotechnology‘s precursors in materials science, chemistry and physics, and to illuminate

important public debates, articles and meetings. Because many of these documents were not

available in electronic from, I photocopied them from books and articles. Relevant documents

ranged from Richard Feynman’s vision in the 1950’s of a microtechnology to articles about more

recent events, such as the invention of the atomic force microscope and the founding of the first

nanotechnology firms. Archival historical documents were necessary for constructing a

comprehensive picture of the role different communities played in the history of nanotechnology

before 1984 when other sources of data were not available.

Additionally, I identified archival resources, which represented each of the five communities.

Having identified the archival source I included an article from that source in the dataset if it

contained one of 53 words that experts in nanotechnology consider to be related to nanoscience2.

To represent the futurist community I collected all of the articles ever published in the

quarterly magazine, Foresight Update, published by the Foresight Institute. The magazine was

disseminated in both electronic and paper form to people who signed up for the Foresight

distribution list. I assembled all congressional documents that mentioned any of the nanoscience

search words through Lexis-Nexis Congressional to represent the government community. To

represent the broker community I collected all of the articles ever published in Forbes, The Wall

Street Journal, Business Week and Fortune related to nanoscience. To represent companies I

collected press releases published through Business Wire. Public relations and investor relations

2 The keywords were abstracted from the keywords developed by a team of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany led by Thomas Heinze and Ullrich Smoch. A list of the keywords used for the search can be found in Appendix 1. 3 The journal Science was chosen, since it considered the most prestigious journal within nanotechnology and its precursor disciplines, i.e. materials science, physics, chemistry and molecular biology.

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professionals use Business Wire to disseminate news releases, photos, multimedia, regulatory

filings and other information. Subjects might include breaking news, earnings results, product

announcements, mergers and acquisitions, public policy, legal issues, webcasts, and press

conference advisories. I searched Factiva to locate all articles ever published in Business Wire

that contained one or more of my search words. To represent the science community I collected

all the articles ever published in Science3 related to nanoscience. For these articles, I

distinguished between purely scientific articles and articles on scientific news and events that

appeared in the front end of the journal. I also collected all the articles related to nanotechnology

published in the Top 50 US Newspapers4 to include a source that was not associated with any of

the communities, and that represented the general public discourse on nanotechnology. Across the

6 databases the search yielded 12,774 articles. An overview of the archival data can be found in

table 3.

After I had collected all the data I chose one article for every month from each data set to

analyze qualitatively. In the early years if less than 12 articles existed for the particular year I

would include all of the articles from that year in the analysis regardless of the time of year that

they were published. Table 3 provides an overview of the complete set of archival data and the

subsection that I selected for in depth qualitative analysis.

-------------------------Insert table 3 about here--------------------------

The third stage: Definitions. The last step in my data collection was to gather nanotechnology

definitions from the top 50 U.S. Newspapers. To investigate the change in the meaning of

nanotechnology over time I randomly selected 6 definitions of nanotechnology published in the

top 50 US Newspapers during each year from 1987, when the first definition of nanotechnology

3 The journal Science was chosen, since it considered the most prestigious journal within nanotechnology and its precursor disciplines, i.e. materials science, physics, chemistry and molecular biology.4 The top 50 US Newspapers are listed in Appendix 1.

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appears, to 2005 generating a total of 146 definitions. I had eight coders rate the specificity of the

definitions on a 5 point Likert scale, where 1 was a narrow definition and 5 was a broad

definition. They were given the following instruction of a broad definition versus a narrow

definition:

A narrow definition of nanotechnology limits the amount of things that fit under the definition, whereas a broad definition encompasses a wider range of things. An example of a narrow definition of a restaurant would for example be “a place where you can sit down and have a multi course meal with wine” a broad definition of a restaurant would be “anywhere people can get food”.

To train the coders, I chose five nanotechnology definitions from the top 50 US newspapers,

which were not among the final sample. Each coder first rated the definitions independently, and

afterwards we discussed as a group the reasoning behind the rating until all 8 coders agreed on a

rating. After we had gone through the five examples the coders showed a high degree of

consistency in their ratings. The Cronbach Alpha testing of the 8 coders interrater reliability of

the 146 definitions was 0.88.

Analysis of the Data

The ethnographic observations and interviews were coded using a grounded theory building

methodology (Strauss and Corbin 1994). The first stage in data analysis was open coding, where

I first coded all the elements in the interviews where the participants referred to the use of the

nanotechnology label or the change in the meaning of nanotechnology. This form of coding

began already during the initial analysis of the ethnographic observations and continued during

the collection of the interviews and the archival data. If this analysis would turn up something

puzzling I would go back to the other data sources including the larger set of archival data in

order to clarify the issue. I thus used the larger set of archival data as a repository for inquiry and

reflection. During this initial analysis I identified the processes of expansion and contraction, and

themes around the changing meaning of nanotechnology.

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In the second stage of analysis I focused on explanations of the contraction and the

expansion of the meaning around nanotechnology. During this analysis I coded the data into

expanding and contracting mechanisms, and identified the five specific mechanisms that

influenced the elasticity of the label: Renaming, labeling, translating, defining, and policing.

During the third stage of data analysis I linked together elements that participants

associated with a strengthening or weakening the five mechanisms. I term these additional

mechanisms “boundary mechanisms” as they form the boundary conditions that shape the force

of the meaning mechanisms. An overview of the coding stages can be found in table 4.

----------------------------Insert table 4 about here---------------------------

FINDINGS

My first finding is that the meaning of the nanotechnology label changed over time. In particular

the meaning of the label became broader. I further identified five mechanisms that influenced the

change in meaning. The three expansive mechanisms were: Renaming, labeling and translating,

and the two contracting mechanisms were: Defining and policing. I also identified two boundary

conditions that influenced the meaning mechanisms and either made them stronger or weaker:

Decoupling and capital.

The mechanisms were not equally distributed across the communities. Some

communities used some mechanisms more relative to others. Table 5 provides an overview of the

distribution of the mechanisms across communities. I expand on this distribution below when I

address each of the mechanisms.

----------------------------Insert table 5 about here---------------------------

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Change in the Meaning of Nanotechnology

Increasing Breath in the Meaning of Nanotechnology. Most informants noted that the meaning

of nanotechnology had changed over time. For example the futurist, Tim Allen, below, who had

been involved in the nanotechnology field since the emergence of the field in the 1980s, notes the

extent to which the meaning of nanotechnology has changed5:

The term "nanotechnology" of course has now been expanded under the impact of the funding situation to include all sorts of things that were not part of the original definition of the technology and to some extent there had been a parallel growth in the use of the term just to mean any nano scale activity”. – Tim Allen, Futurist, part of the early nano-movement

What Tim explains in the quote above is that the original definition of nanotechnology was quite

specific. Over time, however, the nanotechnology label has expanded to include any activity or

technology that is at the nano scale. Most participants agreed with Tim that nanotechnology had

become broader over time. For example the vice president of an aerospace company, Brent

Hansen, noted:

You've got to recognize that nanotech is nothing special for industry in generally. The chemical industries – I deal with people from DuPont and Dow and DSM and Henckels and Air Products and Honda and Siemens and all the normal big players –almost universally nanotechnology is considered just a means to an end. It’s not like biology or chemistry as a definable science. It's too broad. There's materials, there's electronics, there's photonics, and there's medicine. The areas of interest are broad.-Brent Hansen, Vice President, Aerospace company

In the quote above Brent explains that nanotechnology is a broad term that encompasses a wide

variety of activities from electronics over materials science to medical research. He therefore

states that the field is quite different from other fields of activity like biology and chemistry

where the practices included within the field are defined more specifically.

5 The names of the informants and their institutional affiliation have been changed for anonymity. I designed the pseudonyms to reflect the informants’ ethnicity and gender.

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The statements from the informants are corroborated by the analysis of the definitions

from the top 50 US newspapers. The results show that the nanotechnology definitions became

broader over time. Figure 1 depicts the average specificity rating of the eight coders. The graph

is smoothed using a three-year moving average. I used a linear regression model to test the

results. The trend towards the definitions becoming broader over time is significant with a p-

value of 0.0022 and an adjusted R2 equal to 0.0570. An example of a nanotechnology definition

from the early period shows how the definition of nanotechnology tended to be very specific:

Nanotechnology - using a combination of biology and computers to create microscopic "assembler robots" that could build a new car or maybe a new being,The San Francisco Chronicle, June 1989

In the quote above The San Francisco Chronicle states very specifically that the definition of

nanotechnology is related to “assembler robots” and combining biology and computers. Later the

definitions of nanotechnology become more abstract, as this example from the Chicago Sun-

Times in 2005 shows: “Nanotechnology - the science of creating things on a molecular level”.

-------------------Insert figure 1 about here

---------------------

Homogeneity and heterogeneity within the nanotechnology field. Figure 1 also depicts that the

variance follows a U-shaped curve. The figure shows that in the early part of the emergence of

the nanotechnology field there was agreement upon the definition of nanotechnology followed by

a period of greater variance among the definitions, and ending with a new period of agreement

upon the broader definition. This analysis, thus, reveals an increasing homogeneity in

participants’ understanding of the definition of nanotechnology after the mid 1990s. Yet,

simultaneously nanotechnology experienced an increase in the heterogeneity of practices within

the field. That is, with the inclusion of an increasing array of academic disciplines and

technologies from multiple industries “nanotechnology” began to include a multiplicity of

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practices. Figure 2 shows a Herfindahl measure of the percent of articles within the top 50 U.S.

Newspapers that mentioned one of the following disciplines biotechnology, electronics,

chemistry, materials science, medicine, physics or engineering. The graph shows that the

Herfindahl index decreases over time implying an increased heterogeneity within the field with

regards to these scientific practices6. That is early on most articles on nanotechnology referenced

only engineering or physics, but in the latter years the articles are distributed nearly equally

among the seven scientific disciplines.

----------------------------Insert figure 2 about here

---------------------------

In the reminder of the paper I identify the mechanisms underlying the change in meaning of

nanotechnology and the associated push towards homogeneity and heterogeneity within the field.

Expansive Mechanisms: Renaming, Labeling and Brokering

In order to explain the change in meaning within nanotechnology I identified three expansive

mechanisms: renaming, labeling and brokering. Each mechanism was used more by some

communities than others. In the following I detail each of the mechanisms, their associated

communities, and their effect on meaning.

Renaming existing practices. Renaming refers to the process where participants change the

name of their own activities to fit under a new paradigm. For example, a photovoltaic researcher,

Mike Levine, had his whole academic career referred to his work as material science or

photovoltaic, but the last couple of years he had begun to refer to his work as “nanotechnology”.

Renaming was primarily done by scientists and companies as they were the communities that

6 The first two years 1983 and 1984 were excluded from the analysis as the Herfindahl index was equal to one, because only engineering was mentioned. Including these two years, thus, makes the results stronger, but made it difficult to see the trend line in the rest of the graph.

21

were involved in the actual making of science and technology and thus had more to gain by

renaming their activities nanotechnology.

In nanotechnology other labels had been used to describe activities at the nanoscale. In

some areas labels like “mezzo-science”, “micro-technology” or more technical terms like “single-

layer depositioning” had been used to describe activities at the nano-scale, but as the

nanotechnology label became available more people started to rename their activities with the

“nanotechnology” label. The people, who began using the nanotechnology label came from

different scientific and technological backgrounds, and the activities that they engaged in differed

dramatically. Many scientists or companies working in areas related to nanotechnology took

advantage of the opportunity nanotechnology presented in terms of economic and symbolic

resources to claim that they were doing nanotechnology. For example, the Chief of the Nano-

Science Division of a large defense company, Bill Moore, complained of how competitors used

the word “nanotechnology” to describe their product even though their technologies did not fit

under a strict nanotechnology definition:

Unfortunately, I think nano has become misused. Anything that seems to be smaller than the normal product line they call nano, like nano switches as big as your watch. It's ridiculous. – Bill Moore, Chief of Nano-Science Division at defense company

Many participants echoed Bill’s sentiment. A venture capitalist, Kurt Weisman, who controlled a

dedicated nanotechnology fund, emphasized that he believed that there was nothing new about

nanotechnology except new visualization tools, and that many people would lay claim to

nanotechnology even though their work would not fit his definition of the term:

There is nothing really new about nanotechnology. What is new are the tools that enable you to study articles in the size that we currently define as nanotechnology which is one to 20-nanometers. I also hear a lot of people talk about one to 100-nanometers because some people want to get into the hype that surrounds nanotechnology. I've even seen people lately who are working with complex molecules that say they are nanotechnology. – Kurt Weisman, venture capitalist controlling a dedicated nanotechnology fund

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In the quote above Kurt explains that nanotechnology is not really novel, because scientific work

has taken place at the nano scale for a long time, but many people have just been renaming the

work that they were doing, and now they use the nano label. Or stated more blatantly by Brent

Hansen Vice President of an aerospace company: “Everybody who wants to get any funding has

to find a way to call what they're doing nanotechnology”.

The widespread use of renaming expanded the meaning of nanotechnology to include

science and technology across a wide range of disciplines ranging from materials science, applied

physics, and chemistry. Simultaneously, renaming resulted in the inclusion of an increasing

diversity of practices within the nanotechnology field, thereby increasing the heterogeneity of

nanotechnology. The renaming within the field was so dramatic that the American Chemical

Association used the following slogan to advertise their 2005 annual conference: “What is a nine

letter word for nanotechnology? Answer: Chemistry”.

Labeling of existing practices. Labeling is defined as the process whereby participants involved

in the field attach the label to other participants’ activities. Labeling was primarily done by the

government and service providers as both of these communities had separate motivations for

identifying and labeling firms or scientists as “nanotechnology”. Government officials were

motivated to identify firms within their region that belonged to nanotechnology in order to

position their region as a “nanotechnology cluster”, and thus gain national acclaim. Government

officials would, for example, put companies on lists of nanotechnology firms within their region

without the firm’s approval. Service providers were motivated to label firms “nanotechnology”

as they needed to identify token companies that represented the new technological domain that

they could showcase and thereby drive up demand for their products. For example journalists and

conference organizers would write stories about a promising “nanotechnology” firm, even if the

firm did not state that they did nanotechnology. In the quote below Matt Basil, founder and CEO

of a micro-fluidics start-up, describes how external audiences tend to stretch the definition of

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nanotechnology to include his company, because they need to showcase companies that are

actually successful within the nanotechnology space:

My take is that people are always trying to stretch the definition of nanotechnology in various ways to showcase a series of successful products. I think people stretch the definition of nanotechnology to include my company because we have products and all that other stuff, and they're like, "Alright, is somebody out there? Oh, there's [your company], you guys are nanotech, aren't you?" Well, you tell me. - Matt Basil, founder and CEO of micro-fluidics start-up

Matt did not perceive that his company was a nanotechnology company, but it was widely labeled

a nanotechnology company by other participants within the field. Carl Yin, who also headed a

start-up, expanded on Matt’s viewpoint:

This idea [that nanotechnology] is things that are smaller than a hundred nanometers, that by virtue of those dimensions produce novel physical properties – that's not what we're doing at all, but there we are, lumped into nanotechnology. Neither we nor XynTinic – the only two companies at the [conference], are really nanotechnology by what the government is current calling nanotechnology. – Carl Yin, CEO, start-up

Carl experienced that even though he did not believe that his firm currently fit the government’s

nanotechnology definition then other stakeholders within the field attached the nanotechnology

label to his firm. Likewise the other company, XynTinic, which was asked to present at the

conference, was often labeled a nanotechnology firm, even though Carl did not believe that the

firm fit the definition of nanotechnology.

The labeling of firms and research activities by external stakeholders meant that new

firms were included in the nanotechnology category. As many of these firms did not conform to

the existing definition of nanotechnology it led the meaning of the label to expand.

Brokering between stakeholders. Brokering is defined as helping established a shared meaning

between disparate groups. All communities engaged in brokering. For example, Ellis Walter, a

government official explained:

You need to build this broad coalition of individuals, companies, agencies, the Congress, the media, politicians, speechwriters, the Office of Management and

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Budget, et cetera, et cetera. In this very heterogeneous environment, what political scientists call policy networks, the arguments that they are receptive to, and their incentives, and their culture, and the way in which they look at the world, are all vastly different. You need to develop arguments and messages and documents that are responsive to these different communities. – Ellis Walter, Government official

In the quote above Ellis describes how government officials often have to engage in brokering in

order to change the meaning of nanotechnology in a way that resonates with different

communities. Another government official, Peter Salinas, explained how the government

officials that coined the term the National Nanotechnology Initiative7 were changing the

nanotechnology concept, so that it would fit with multiple audiences.

In the beginning, we were debating whether it ought to be the, “National Nanotechnology Initiative,” or the, “National Nanoscience Initiative.” We knew that, “nanoscience,” was the right formulation, but if we had to get it through Congress then we needed to name it, “Nanotechnology,” and say that it would have a large impact on the economy and society. So we spent the next five years apologizing that it was misnamed. But it was misnamed from the point of view of the science, but it was the right name with regards to the political process. – Peter Salinas, Government official

In the quote above Peter explains the process through which different communities came to settle

on creating an initiative that funded nanotechnology instead of nanoscience, even though they

knew that most of the research that they wanted to fund was not yet a “technology” but early

stage “science”. Yet, because they needed to signal to political stakeholders that the initiative

was going to create jobs and revenue they chose to name it “nanotechnology”.

Brokering added to the expansion of meaning, because as actors translated the meaning

of a concept into a new context they created a new meaning for the concept. Brokering also

added to the heterogeneity of practices, ideas and definitions within the nanotechnology field, and

brokering brought in new communities and groups, who were not prior part of the

nanotechnology field. I will address the extent to which multiple meanings were able to co-exist

versus a general broadening of meaning in the boundary condition section: decoupling.

7 The National Nanotechnology Initiative is the U.S. government’s national initiative on nanotechnology. The last couple of years the budget of the National Nanotechnology Initiative has been around US $ 1 billion.

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Contracting Mechanisms: Defining and Policing

There were two mechanisms that contributed to the contraction of meaning: defining and

policing. I elaborate on these two mechanisms in the sections below.

Policing excessive use. Renaming was countered by “policing”. Policing is defined as the

process of questioning and evaluating whether use of the nanotechnology label was rightly or

wrongly applied. Policing was primarily done by service providers. Sally Mohan, the Editor in

Chief of a nanotechnology trade magazine, retold an incidence where a firm had approached her

in order to be featured in her magazine. Yet, she turned them down after her questioning revealed

that they technology was not at the nano-scale:

There are a lot of people who lie in this area. There's a lot of exaggeration. So we look really carefully to try to ensure that it's not just somebody trying to take advantage of the buzz that's going on right now around nanotechnology. I had one company that was talking about a filtration technology and I got them on the phone because the pieces didn't quite fit together for me. And I was asking them exactly what they were doing and how it was nano and they started throwing around the word ‘van der Waals’ which are attractive forces. But I just called them on it and I said, "This doesn't make any sense. What does ‘van der Waals’ have to do with what you're talking about?" And then the guy said, "Well, we don't really do it at the nanoscale." I was like "Well, then I don't really want to write about you either, do I?– Sally Mohan, Editor in Chief, nanotechnology trade magazine

In the case described above Sally acted like a gatekeeper who prevented participants’ from

renaming their activities with the nanotechnology label and thus prevents firms from using the

label for purely symbolic reasons. Pam Gilbert, a journalist of a well renowned technology

magazine, supported Sally’s views:

You try to be cautious with what you write about. I mean the business press gets inundated with everyone from PR people to consulting groups to venture capitalists. We get hit by everybody saying, "Write about me, write about me, write about me." And we actually don't write about everybody and, in fact, if anything it's remarkable how restrained [chuckle] sometimes the business press actually is. I mean if you compared the number of e-mails and press releases that I get about the next great thing with the number of things that I end up writing or my colleagues end up writing it's – the ratio always amazes me. – Pam Gilbert, journalist at technology magazine

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Pam states that firms are constantly flooding her with requests to write a stroy about their

companies. Many firms approached her claiming that they were doing nanotechnology, but she

was selective about which firms she would portrait in her magazine. She acknowledges that the

business press has a bad reputation among many of the participants within the field as creating

exaggerations about the prospective gains and future of nanotechnology, but she voiced that given

the flood of requests that they received that she was actually enforcing a strict policy for who to

cover in the magazine. Also funding agencies would police who used the nanotechnology label

inappropriately to sort through which proposals would be funded. As stated by Brigitte Albany, a

government official:

The application asks for what the topic area is and some sample questions, and occasionally, there are some people who cannot read directions, but you justthrow those out.…[..]… We basically use the NNI [National Nanotechnology Initiative] and the NNS's [National Nanotechnology Strategy]’s definition [of nanotechnology]– Brigitte Albany, government official

In the quote above Brigitte stresses that when making funding decisions they made sure

that the research matched the definition provided by the National Nanotechnology Initiative as

they otherwise would not fund the proposal. Yet, this was a sorting process where she would

receive many grant proposals that she evaluated did not conform to the definition of

nanotechnology.

Policing let to the contraction of meaning around the label, because fewer people were

able to use the label for purely symbolic purposes when gatekeepers singled out firms that tried to

use the nanotechnology label even though their products were not at the nano-scale.

Defining nanotechnology. Some participants within the field worked hard in order to create a

shared definition of nanotechnology. The efforts to create a definition of nanotechnology was

motivated by participants wanting to create stricter boundaries for what nanotechnology was and

also to facilitate communication across disparate communities. Defining was primarily done by

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government officials and members of the futurist community. A government official, Anne

Palmer, explained the process of defining nanotechnology:

[Nanotechnology] does have a definition and we spent quite a bit of time on it…. So I think there's a general agreement that nanotechnology is not just small but both small and then incorporates some performance or property because of its size. Then the third thing is the idea of control, that there's sort of an engineered or designed quality. It's not just collecting pollen samples which happen to be nanometer size. That's just not a nanotechnology project. And, frankly, there was quite a bit of debate by the National Institutes of Health because they had to struggle with the idea that if you just say something is at the nanometer scale and its function is at that scale that includes a lot of biomolecular science which they were not going to rename nanotechnology. So from the point of view of the biologists, they also required this element of control so there's sort of a sense that there is some utilization of an engineered inorganic aspect of nanotechnology along with the organic or biological. So if it's just a biological process they wouldn't call it nanotechnology. – AnnePalmer, Government official

What Anne explains above is that within the government there was intense debate about the

boundaries for using the nanotechnology label as the new definition had to encompass a wide

range of different interest groups. Finding a definition that also fit the biological sciences was

particularly difficult as most biological processes happen at the nanoscale, and biologists, thus,

were hesitant to sign on to a broad definition of nanotechnology.

Defining was an important contraction mechanism in creating restrictions for how people

could actually use the label as it created a reference point for how the definition could or could

not be used. Defining also interacted with policing as the existence of a definition made it easier

for gatekeepers and critics to police label use that deviated from publicized definitions.

Boundary Mechanisms: Decoupling and Capital

I identified two boundary mechanisms that influenced the expanding and contracting meaning

mechanisms: Decoupling and capital. These two mechanisms increased or decreased the strength

of the meaning mechanisms.

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Decoupling practices. Decoupling refers to the process whereby participants use multiple

conflicting meaning systems simultaneously but in different context (Edelman 1992).

Decoupling is a powerful mechanism in facilitating a political coalition, which arises when

multiple meanings of the same concept co-exist within an organization, or organizational field,

without causing conflicts or questioning from participants (Cyert and March 1963; March 1962).

Recent studies have suggested that decoupling is a result of heterogeneous organizational fields

with multiple and often contradictory pressures on the organization (Ruef and Scott 1998).

Decoupling was done primarily by the government and scientists.

Participants within the nanotechnology field’s use of the nanotechnology concept meant that

multiple meanings of nanotechnology co-existed within the field. Many scientists for example

used different labels depending on the audience. When they communicated with funding agencies

they would invoke the nanotechnology label, but they would use scientific labels to refer to their

work within the scientific community. Nate Walker, a materials scientist, described the

decoupling that took place within the field:

[You use the terms] depending on what kind of others you talk to….for example I know a lot of people from chemistry….when they talk within chemistry and in the scientific community, they don't use the nano-science and nanotechnology terms so much. When they talk to people in industry, and venture capitalists they certainly use these terms a lot, because this is an advantage….So two things; You don't need to use nano-science and nanotechnology terms to encourage your colleagues….But you do understand the significance of [the terms]. To the public eye, you might want to use layman term to describe it – Nate Walker, materials scientist

In the quote above Nate describes that many participants within the nanotechnology field

behaved strategically in the way that they employed the nanotechnology label by tailoring their

message for a specific audience. In particular they would not use the nanotechnology label when

they were communicating with other scientists within the field, but if they were trying to raise

money for their research they would claim the label as they knew that many funding agencies had

monies that were earmarked for nanotechnology.

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Decoupling also happened extensively within the government where various agencies would

use the nanotechnology label differently. For example within the Environmental Protection

Agency they would inform the National Nanotechnology Initiative that they were funding

nanotechnology, while simultaneously continuing to fund the same projects that they had funded

for a long time.

Decoupling was a boundary condition for the meaning mechanisms, because decoupling

allowed multiple meanings to co-exist without putting pressure on the creation of one shared

detailed understanding that bridged multiple communities. It was thus possible for an abundance

of different definitions of nanotechnology to co-exist without contestation about the appropriate

use of the term. The prevalence of extensive decoupling within nanotechnology allowed multiple

communities to agree on a broad definition of nanotechnology while simultaneously adhering to

vastly different definitions of nanotechnology in their daily work.

One government official, Carl Brown, who had been tasked with assessing the size of the

nanotechnology marked, explained how the broad definition of nanotechnology did not apply

well to the semiconductor industry:

You can quarrel about the definition, but NNI defines nanotechnology as anything that is 1-100 nanometer and that have new properties at this level. There is a debate about whether or not technology that are 200 nm can be included. But since the current semiconductors have gone below 100 nm. they could actually be characterized as nanotechnology. But they have not fundamentally changed their products, so we say that they are not nanotechnology. If we labeled semiconductors less than 100 nm as nanotechnology then it would make everybody look stupid, since the size of the nanotechnology marked would go from $1 billion in one year to $100 billion the next year. – Carl Brown, government official

Carl was faced with the dilemma that if he adhered to the general definition of nanotechnology as

it was defined by the National Nanotechnology Initiative then he ought to include the

semiconductor industry within nanotechnology, as their products had features that were less than

100 nm. Yet, he realized that this would undermine the legitimacy of the report and make

“everyone look stupid” as the nanotechnology market would increase 100 fold in one year. He

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thus decided to decouple his activities from the general definition by just excluding

semiconductors from his analysis.

The label’s association with symbolic and economic capital. An important driver of both the

expansion and the contraction mechanisms was the amount of either symbolic or economic

capital that informants perceived to be associated with the label. Capital was provided primarily

by the government and venture capitalists. If informants perceived that the label was associated

with capital they were more likely to engage in both renaming and labeling efforts in order to

obtain the resources that were affiliated with the label. For example in the quote below James

Wang, a materials scientist, expresses how the funding associated with the nanotechnology label

has motivated people to adopt the label without changing the nature of the work that they are

doing:

I think [government funding] has just changed what people call it. I think we saw a lot of people change the name of what they are working on. Now they say that they work on nanotechnology and all that really happened is that people changed names around to get funding…..Instead of people getting a normal NSF grant they got an NSF grant that had nanotechnology in the title. – James Wang, materials scientist

James, like many other scientists, was under extreme pressure to secure funding for his lab and

graduate students. When scientists began to realize that there were grants earmarked for

nanotechnology, and that nanotechnology was so ill defined that they without too much trouble

could rename their existing research under the nanotechnology label many ultimately did so.

It was not only economic incentives that motivated participants to engage in renaming and

labeling practices. Some informants were also motivated to rename their activities, because using

the nanotechnology label facilitated access to symbolic resources as well. That is, by using the

nanotechnology label participants felt that that their work or the work of their affiliated

organization received more positive attention by for example differentiating them from their

competitors.

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Theoretical Model: The Elasticity of the Label

Based on my findings I developed the following theoretical model. Figure 3 below depicts how

the mechanisms influenced the meaning of the label. The expansive mechanisms, renaming,

labeling, and brokering, led the label to become more elastic and thus expand the meaning,

whereas the contracting mechanisms, policing and defining, led the label to be less elastic and

thus the meaning of the label became narrower. Furthermore, the two boundary mechanisms,

capital and decoupling, and the varied involvement of the communities within the field

strengthened or weakened the meaning mechanisms.

-----------------------Insert figure 3 about here

-----------------------

In nanotechnology the expanding mechanisms were stronger than the contracting mechanisms,

which led the nanotechnology label to broaden over time. However, in other fields this might be

different. The expansion of the nanotechnology label was among others driven by the large

amount of capital that was associated with the label and which increased both renaming and

labeling activities. Furthermore, nanotechnology was a very heterogeneous field, which

facilitated decoupling. In other more homogeneous fields the lack of decoupling might better

allow for policing and defining to happen within the field.

The Process of Expansion and Contraction

The expansion and contraction mechanisms did, however, not unfold independently of each

other. Instead a temporal pattern of iterations between the expansive and the contractive elements

emerged. I detail the relationship between these mechanisms in a historical analysis below.

Defining the early field. The term nanotechnology was coined by Eric Drexler, a PhD student at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in 1986 in his now famous book, Engines of

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Creation – The Coming Area of Nanotechnology. In this book Drexler introduced the term

nanotechnology and provided the first definition of the term8:

Microcircuits have parts measured in micrometers – that is in millionth of a meter – but molecules are measured in nanometers (a thousand times smaller). We can use the terms “nanotechnology” or “molecular technology” interchangeably to describe the new style of technology. The engineers of the new systems will build both nanocircuits and nanomachines”- Drexler, Engines of Creation, 1986, p. 4-5

The definition of nanotechnology that Drexler provides above emphasizes that nanotechnology is

associated with the nanomenter size scale, but also that nanotechnology ought to be used to create

microscopic nanomachines and nanocircuits. He thus viewed nanotechnology as enabling the

creation of molecular sized machines that would manufacture goods from the “bottom-up,” atom-

by-atom. This manufacturing process entailed assembler robots, which built everything from

computers and jet engines to silverware one atom at a time using only simple raw materials like

crude oil. When Engine’s of Creation was first published it was reviewed in many major

magazines and newspapers and it received generally positive reviews. Below is a review from

The Washington Post of Engines of Creation:

Imagine a world where the finest foods and the most luxurious clothing -essentially the best of everything - could be yours effortlessly. What's more, your good fortune wouldn't deprive anyone else. Is it the imagined world-to-come of Utopian thinkers? Or, perhaps the paradise of lifeafter-death envisioned by the religious? No, it is actually the vision of a radical group of scientists attempting to develop new ways to manipulate the atom - Washington Post, 21 December 1986.

Reviews like the one above in the Washington Post combined with the popularity of

Engines of Creation were instrumental in exposing the general public to the nanotechnology

label. Yet, the futurists were also actively engaged in promoting the label to stakeholders.

8 The word “nano-technology” was used for the first time by the Japanese researcher, Taniguchi, in 1974, but the usageof the word did not disseminate until after Drexler recreated it. Drexler was not aware of Taniguchi’s earlier usage when he began to use the word.

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Expansion in the Early Field

Brokering between stakeholders. The creation and definition of the label “nanotechnology” and

the public availability of the label to multiple communities meant that other communities began

to use the label. Yet, the futurist community also took action in order to broker the concept to

other communities through the creation of publications that would appeal to multiple

stakeholders. The futurists attempted to interest business people in nanotechnology with a book

called Unbounding the Future (1991) which emphasized potential commercial applications of

nanotechnology. One of the authors, Gayle Pergamit, explained how they had tried to position

the concept of nanotechnology in a way that would broker the concept to multiple communities:

The readership [of prior publications] was not attracting people coming from the non-technical side of the house that is folks from business, intelligent people with a humanities background, people in law, politics, basically the other side of the house. And if you were interested in seeing the field development not just technically but also with a business perspective, you're going to need to fund this thing. So if you’re going to need to fund it the people you’re talking to are not the techies they’re the business people…..So you just need to be able to open this dialogue…. [Drexler] was certainly covering the more techie end of it and so we decided, okay, let’s do a book that covers the other end of the spectrum. So it was deliberately based on audience targeting - Gayle Pergamit, co-author of Unbounding the Future, 1991

In the quote above Gayle explains how they explicitly sat out to broker the concept of

nanotechnology to multiple constituencies. These activities expanded the meaning of the label as

the brokering activities began to shift the meaning of nanotechnology away from the original

meaning around nanoengineering towards a more general perception of nanotechnology as any

technology involving manipulation at the nanoscale.

Renaming and labeling. The futurists’ brokering activities were successful, and new

communities began to use the nanotechnology label. But it was not all communities that shared

the vision for nanotechnology that the futurists had created, and they began renaming and

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labeling activities that were far removed from Drexler’s original vision with the label

“nanotechnology”. This development was not lost on participants within the futurist community.

Eric Drexler wrote an article in Science News on 15 February 1993 titled “Nanotechnology and

"Nanotechnology"” were he expressed his dismay that the label that he had created was not being

used for its original purpose:

By 1992, a Science News headline could announce "Nanotechnology yields transparent magnet." Does nanotechnology now exist? Has the revolution arrived? If so, then the nanotechnology revolution seems to be a dud. Where are the molecular machines? Where are the desktop manufacturing systems? Where are the nanocomputers, the cell repair machines, the era of abundance? Few in the newly-mustered army of nanotechnology researchers even aim at such goals. It would seem that there has been a profound miscalculation--unless, that is, there has been a more prosaic modification in the use of words………..[……..]…… In the last several years, chemistry has been termed nanochemistry, fine-grained materials have been termed nanostructured materials, submicron lithography has been termed nanolithography. These topics have been covered by a conference hosted by Nature and by a special issue of Science, all under the banner of "nanotechnology"--a buzzword whose time has come. Longevity magazine carries ads for "NANO shampoo and NANO conditioner," containing a derivative of the anti-baldness agent minoxidil. What is missing in this ferment? Engines of Creation introduced the term nanotechnology in 1986 to describe a technology based on mechanical assembly of molecules to build complex structures, that is, the use of molecular machinery to perform mechanosynthesis for molecular manufacturing – Eric Drexler, Science News 15 February 1993

In the quote above Drexler highlights the process of renaming and meaning expansion that would

become even more pronounced later in the development in the field. He explains that many

stakeholders have begun to use the label for their own purposes in ways that departed from how

he had envisioned the use of the label. Already in 1993 participants within the field began to use

the nano-label in association with mundane products like shampoo and materials, which were not

directly connected to Drexler’s original vision of nanotechnology as the creation complex nano-

machines.

Affiliation with economic and symbolic capital. Not only did the availability of the label and

the futurist communities brokering activities make the label available to new communities, but

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some of these communities also began to associate the label with economic and symbolic capital.

Initially particular people within the government saw nanotechnology as an opportunity to

increase funding for the basic sciences and engineering, without mentioning chemistry or

materials science, which tended to be stigmatized and not yield enthusiasms in the general public.

Nanotechnology on the other hand was new and exciting and contained a vision for a radical

change in future technologies. Chuck Pearson, a member of the Presidents Counsel on Science

and Technology (PCAST), explained:

[Nanotechnology] is new. There was a strong case to be made that in the long run this was going to either transform or create some new industries that ultimately would provide jobs which what people in Congress see their role as doing. The problem is, whether we like it or not, if you walk into Congress and you say, "chemistry," or you say, "physics," or you say, "mathematics," to them that says, "more of the same." And so they are looking for new and exciting things that should benefit the country and I think the term kind of got that and we all know that while it wasn't going to happen in a year or two, that there were visions out there about new ways of making materials high strength, lightweight, better conductivity, things that people kind of understand and get excited about but yet were real. – Chuck Pearson, member of the President’s Counsel on Science and Technology (PCAST)

Chuck explains above that the nanotechnology label served a political purpose, because it did not

contain the same negative connotations as chemistry or physics. It was, therefore, easier to

establish a consensus among multiple different constituents within the government to create an

initiative, and thus funding, for nanotechnology. As expressed by President Bill Clinton when he

announced the national nanotechnology initiative at Caltech on January 21, 2000:

My budget supports a major new national nanotechnology initiative worth $500 million ….[….]….. Just imagine, materials with 10 times the strength of steel and only a fraction of the weight; shrinking all the information at the Library of Congress into a device the size of a sugar cube; detecting cancerous tumors that are only a few cells in size. Some of these research goals will take 20 or more years to achieve. But that is precisely why….. there is such a critical role for the federal government. – President Bill Clinton, 2000

In President Clinton’s announcement of the National Nanotechnology Initiative he drew

directly on the ideas about nanotechnology put forward by the futurist movement. Yet, the

36

monies that were earmarked for the nanotechnology initiative (and which grew steadily to reach 1

billion dollars a year in 2005), where to be distributed across several government agencies, some

of which were not dedicated to supporting the futurists vision of nanotechnology.

Simultaneously, as the government initiated the National Nanotechnology Initiative many

venture capitalists also created funds dedicated to nanotechnology and nanotechnology became

touted as the “next big thing”. Year 2000 for example saw the founding of Lux Capital – a

venture capital firm dedicated to nanotechnology. In an April 2001 press release Lux Capital

described their activities in the following way:

Lux Capital is a venture capital firm focused on making early-stage investments in nanotechnology and related growth sectors emerging from leading academic centers of excellence. Lux Capital's managing partners, investors, advisors and extended network are leveraged to provide unparalleled access, expertise and market intelligence to its portfolio companies. The firm's principals are recognized internationally as thought-leaders in the field of nanotechnology. Forbes and Lux Capital publish their monthly investment insights through the Forbes/Wolfe Nanotech Report. Established in 2000, the firm is headquartered in New York. More information is available at www.luxcapital.com. – Lux Capital, press release, April 2001

In the quote above Lux Capital state that they are a venture capital fund dedicated to

nanotechnology. The emergences of such funds increased participants’ tendencies to engage in

renaming and labeling processes as the label began to be associated with economic and symbolic

capital.

Renaming and labeling. The association of the nano-label with economic and symbolic capital

was not lost on the participants within the field. With both scientists and entrepreneurs struggling

to fund labs, post.docs and research and development activities many viewed the nanotechnology

label as an aid in their struggle for survival. Many also experienced pressure to use the label from

other participants in the field, like government officials, venture capitalists, and service providers.

A CEO and founder, Richard Riemann, of a nanotechnology start-up in the semiconductor space

explained:

37

No. I don't [say that we are a nanotechnology company]. I mean some people put us in that category and the truth is we are not…..We developed a new process technology that adds new capabilities and opens up new markets and new possibilities but the truth is it's not really nanotechnology. I could probably figure out a spin to come back with a story where I can put [my company]…..in the nanotechnology bin. But I think that's more untrue than true….[…]… I do not talk about the company as a nanotechnology company. Because I know it's not intellectually honest….. I couldn't stand up at a conference and claim that our company's a nanotechnology company leading in that field. I wouldn't feel honest to people. What I say is that we have a different semiconductor technology that enables us to do new things. I don't tell [venture capitalists] that we're nanotechnology except I got advice from some that I should do that. Because it's a buzzword people like. That's why people call it nanoimprint technology as opposed to imprint technology. – Richard Riemann, CEO and Founder, nanotechnology start-up

Richard is expressing a common sentiment among participants within the field that stakeholders

would use nanotechnology to label their firm even though they did not have nanotechnology

capabilities. Richard feels that this pressure comes from venture capitalists, who are eager to

invest in firms that bear the nanotechnology label. Yet, Richard has tried to dodge this pressure

as he does not believe that his firm conforms to the definition of nanotechnology.

Contraction in the Early Field

Defining and policing. The extensive renaming and labeling led some participants within the

field to start policing who used and who did not use the nanotechnology label. Simultaneously,

there were efforts to create a new definition for nanotechnology that did not allow for as much

renaming and labeling. For example, in 2006 a scandal broke out because a cleaning product

named “Magic Nano” turned out to cause health problems when inhaled, which arose a public

backlash against nanotechnology. Yet, Magic Nano did not contain nanotechnology - the product

was merely labeled as such. The scandal, thus, led many participants within the nanotechnology

field to call for greater scrutiny over the use of the nano-label. The main nanotechnology trade

magazine, Small Times, interviewed the executive director of the nanotechnology business

association, NanoBusiness Alliance, Sean Murduck, about the issue. He stated:

38

The confusion over whether or not the "Magic Nano" product really is "nano" points to the need to develop standards for terminology so that there is agreement as to what constitutes a nanoparticle, nanofilm, or a "nanofluid," said Sean Murdock, executive director of the NanoBusiness Alliance, the U.S. trade association of the nanotech industry. "If companies call things nano that are not and then have issues with them it does create a potential problem with perceived risk being associated with nanotech products," he said.” - Small Times 14 April 2006, “Magic Nano shows Industry need for Standard Terminology”

The sentiments expressed by Sean in the quote above resonated with many participants in the

nanotechnology community, who believed that more policing should take place so that only firms

with nano capabilities and products that incorporated nanotechnology would use the pre- or

postfix “nano”. The Magic Nano scandal was therefore followed by a wave of efforts to both

define and police the nanotechnology label.

These efforts at contracting the meaning of the label were however met with a counter

pressure of renaming and labeling within the field as participants were still motivated to use the

label due to its association with economic and symbolic resources. Ultimately, the expansion

pressures were more powerful within the nanotechnology field resulting in the expansion of the

meaning of nanotechnology.

The Temporal Association between the Mechanisms

The relationship between the contracting and the expanding mechanisms are thus cyclical as a

movement in one direction increases the probability that participants will engage in the opposite

process. Figure 4 depicts the temporal relationship between the meaning mechanisms, the

boundary mechanisms, and the expansion and contraction of meaning within the field. In some

fields either the expanding or the contracting mechanisms dominate, which leads the field’s

meaning to either expand or contract.

-----------------------Insert figure 4 about here

-----------------------

39

DISCUSSION

Meaning is a central theoretical construct for understanding the functioning of organizational

fields (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Fligstein 2001a; Meyer and Rowan 1977). Yet, we know

little about what leads to coherence versus heterogeneity of a field’s meaning (Schneiberg and

Clemens 2006). I address this gap in the literature by specifying the mechanisms which influence

the expansion and contraction of meaning within an emerging organizational field.

This paper makes several theoretical contributions. First, by specifying the mechanisms

that lead meaning to either expand or contract I explain how organizational fields can evolve

along different trajectories. In particular, I resolve a puzzle within the current literature that

meaning expands within some fields (Benford and Snow 2000; Sinaceur, Heath and Cole 2003;

Zbaracki 1998) whereas it contracts in others (Pinch and Bijker 1989; Rosa and Porac 2002;

Utterback 1994). This is possible, because the strength of the mechanisms might differ within

fields. For example, within the emerging biotechnology field the defining mechanism was

stronger than in nanotechnology, which led the meaning of biotechnology to contract over time.

Early in the biotechnology field participants organized and created joint definitions at the famous

Asilomar conference, which let participants within the field to have common definitions of the

boundary of the field (Berg et al. 1975). In its infancy the biotechnology field encompassed

elements ranging from enzyme production, agricultural products to human therapeutics.

Recently, only human therapeutics has been included under the biotechnology label whereas

other forms of biotechnology are presented with a qualifying pre-fix like “agricultural

biotechnology” or “environmental biotechnology”. Understanding the mechanisms underlying

the development of meaning within a field is important for understanding these varied trajectories

of fields.

Second, this paper adds to our understanding of how symbolic resources are employed by

participants within fields, and how this use enables institutional change. In particular, I show

how change can occur through the mundane activities of regular participants within the field.

40

This paper thus addresses the call by Powell and Colyvas (2008) to study the everyday actions

that enable institutional change. This perspective breaks with the conceptualization of

institutional change put forward by both social movement theories (Benford and Snow 2000) and

theories of institutional entrepreneurship (Battilana, Leca and Boxenbaum 2009; Fligstein 2001b)

where institutional change is viewed as originating with central agents who either conceptualize a

collective action frame or mobilize activities. These theories tend to place the locus of action

with central individuals who intentionally act to cause institutional change. Instead, I show how

institutional change can occur through the actions of individual participants, who are not

collectively organized. The majority of participants within the nanotechnology field did not have

a vision of neither creating nor changing an organizational field, yet their individually motivated

actions ultimately change the construction of meaning with the field. Thus, even though

institutional entrepreneurs (Battilana, Leca and Boxenbaum 2009) and social movement

organizers (Benford and Snow 2000) can act as mobilizers of institutional change then change

can also occur when a multitude of people act on their own fruition.

Third, this study contributes to our understanding of symbolic boundaries. Symbolic

boundaries segregate different symbolic systems in which actions and labels have different

meanings (Bourdieu 1989). Yet, we still know little about how symbolic boundaries are

sharpened or blurred (Lamont and Molnar 2002). This paper shows how the expanding and

contracting meaning mechanisms might lead to boundary blurring or sharpening by including or

excluding elements within the symbolic system. The blurring or sharpening of symbolic

boundaries can, thus, be locally constituted and negotiated. Indeed, the structure of the

organizational field and the participants involved will also influence whether symbolic

boundaries are maintained. If the structure of the field facilitates decoupling or associates a

particular label with capital then it is more likely that the meaning of the field will expand as

decoupling hampers policing and capital encourages individuals to engage in renaming, labeling

and connotative change.

41

Finally, this study sheds light on the emergence of an organizational field. In contrast to most

studies of the emergence of organizational fields that have focused on founding events as the

driver of field emergence (Carroll, Hannan and Polos 2000; Helfat and Lieberman 2002; Klepper

1996) this study emphasizes that the construction of meaning is likewise important for field

emergence. In particular, the boundaries of a field are determined by the strength of the meaning

mechanisms. In fields were the expanding mechanisms are strong the boundaries of the field

expands and firms and technologies already in existence become included within the boundaries

of the new field. In contrast in fields were the contracting mechanisms are strong, less renaming

and labeling occurs and fewer existing firms are included within the category. The process of

meaning construction determines which firms and individuals are considered as legitimately

participating in the field and who are not. The meaning mechanisms of renaming, labeling,

connotative change, defining and policing can thus be viewed as one of the basic elements of who

“gets counted” (Kennedy 2008) within a field. The process of categorizing who belongs to a field

is, therefore, a socially constructed process involving the everyday actions of field participants.

As it is not only newly founded firms and technologies that get included as belonging to the field

this paper recasts emergence at not only a founding process, but also a categorization process.

This study opens up many questions for future research. First, it would be useful to

conduct a comparative analysis between several fields in which meaning became broader and

fields in which meaning because narrower to better understand whether the sequence of events

differ in these two kinds of fields. Second, it would be interesting to track a single field for an

even longer period of time in order to determine what happens to a field that keeps expanding in

meaning. Would it lead the entire field to implode? Or to break down into subfields? A

comparison between different expanding fields could also lead to insights into whether there are

different possible long term paths for field evolution.

42

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TABLE 1: Key Events during the Emergence of the Nanotechnology Field1984-1995 1996-2000 2001-2005

Technical advances

1982: Invention of the scanning tunneling microscope1985: Discovery of Buckminister Fullerenes1986: Nobel prize awarded for the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope

1996: Nobel prize awarded for the invention of Buckminister Fullerenes

(important incremental innovations)

Social institutions

1987: The non-profit Foresight Institute is Founded1990: Establishment of the journal “Nanotechnology”.1992: Establishment of the journal “Nanostructured Materials”

1996: Establishment of a government working group on nanotechnology 1997: Establishment of the for-profit Nano Science and Technology Institute1998: Establishment of the Interagency Working Group on Nanotechnology (IWGN) under the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC)1997: Founding of Zyvex the fist dedicated nanotechnology company

2001: Founding of the trade magazine Small Times2001: First IBF conference on Nanotechnology Investment2001: Red Herring holds first Nanotechnology Briefing2001: Founding of the National Business Alliance2002: Founding of the Wolfe/Forbes Nanotech Report2002: University of Washington launches nations first doctoral program in nanotechnology2003: President Bush signs the second Nanotechnology Bill.2004: Merrill Lynch launches nanotechnology index2004: The US Patent and Trademark Office launches a patent class exclusively for nanotechnology2006: Founding of the journal Nature Nanotechnology

Important publications

1986: Eric Drexler writes Engines of Creation

1996: Scientific American prints cover story on nanotechnology1997: World Technology Evaluation Center (WTEC) publishes first report on nanotechnology

2000: Bill Joy publishes article in Wired about the dangers of nanotechnology2001: Red Herring publishes nanotechnology special issue.2003: Nature Biotechnology publishes special focus on Nanobiotechnology2004: The Economist publishes special issue on nanotechnology2004: Red Herring publishes nanotechnology special Issue

Vision of futureProducts

Microscopic nanobotsNanoscale manufacturing systemsCryonic technology

Storing library of congress in a device the size of a sugar cube.Detecting cancerous tumors before they are visible to the human eye Making materials that are stronger than steel at a fraction of the weight

Enhanced lab top batteriesSolar cellsFaster and smaller semiconductorsLab-on-a-chip

Existing products

(none) (none) Stain resistant pantsWrinkle free shirtsTransparent sunscreenSemiconductors with gate width less than 100 nm.

47

TABLE 2: Overview of the Interviews

Enthusiasts 13Government 11Service providers 18Companies 24Scientists 11Total 77

TABLE 3: Overview of the Quantitative Data

Archival Data Data Source Years Number of Articles

Articles Analyzed Qualitatively

Futurists Foresight Update 1987-2004 926 204 Government

Congressional hearings 1991-2005 925 142

Companies Press releases 1988-2005 4,157 170 Science The journal Science 1956-2005 2,509 233 Brokers Fortune, Forbes, The Wall

Street Journal, Business Week

1984-2005 494 189

Newspapers Top 50 US Newspapers 1984-2005 3,762 247Archival data total

12,773 1,185

The archival data listed above was supplemented with additional important documents that were pivotal in the development of nanotechnology.

TABLE 4: Overview of Coding Structure

Open coding Second round Third round

Expansion Renaming RenamingLabeling LabelingBrokering Brokering

Contraction Defining DefiningPolicing Policing

CapitalDecouplingCommunity involvement

48

TABLE 5: The Use of Meaning Mechanisms across Communities

Government Scientists Companies Service providers

Enthusiasts

Expansion mechanisms Brokering X X X X X Renaming X X Labeling X XContraction mechanisms Defining X X Policing XBoundary mechanisms Capital X X Decoupling X X

FIGURE 1: Expansion of the Nanotechnology Definition over Time

49

FIGURE 2: Herfindahl Index of Mentions of Scientific Practices within the Top 50 US Newspaper Articles on Nanoscience

0.15

0.175

0.2

0.225

0.25

0.275

1985

1987

1989

1991

1993

1995

1997

1999

2001

2003

2005

Years

Her

fin

dah

l

Herfindahl

FIGURE 3: Expansion and Contraction Mechanisms

CapitalDecoupling

Expansion MechanismsRenamingLabelingTranslating

Contraction MechanismsDefiningPolicing

Elasticity of the label

+

-Community involvement

Boundary Mecahnisms

50

Impa

ct o

n m

eani

ngFIGURE 4: Process Model of Meaning Contraction and Expansion

DefiningDefiningPolicing

Capital Decoupling

Community involvement

Renaming LabelingBrokering

DefiningPolicing

Elasticity of the label Elasticity of the label

Mea

ning

m

echa

nism

s

Bou

ndar

y m

echa

nism

s

Capital Decoupling

Renaming Labeling

Brokering

Involves

Exp

ands

Exp

ands

Ena

bles

Exp

ands

Con

trac

ts

Ena

bles

Con

trac

ts

Community involvement

Dim

inishes Ena

bles

Ena

bles

51

APPENDIX 1

Search Words used to Identify Articles

nanotube, nanorod, buckyball, buckministerfullere, fullerene, molecular manufacturing, molecular engineering, molecular selfassembly, quantum dot, nanodot, nanoscale, nanosensor, nanostructure, atomic force microscope, scanning force microscope, scanning tunneling microscope, nanobot, molecular robot, nanodevice, nanoparticle, nanopore, nanomotor, nanopowder, diamondiod, nanofabrication, nanoarray, nanocomputation, nanoengineering, nanocrystal, nanoelectronic, nanophotonic, nanochannel, nanoceramic, nanofabric, nanoimprint, nanolayer, nanosubstrat, nanowire, nanomachine, nanoswitches, nanocoating, nanocomposit, nanoconducting, nanomanipulator, nanomaterial, nanoarchitecture, nanobio, nanolithography, nanophase, nanotech

Top 50 US Newspapers

Boston Herald , Buffalo News (N.Y.), Charlotte Observer (N.C.) , Chicago Sun-Times , Chicago Tribune, Daily News (New York), Denver Post , Detroit Free Press, Houston Chronicle, Indianapolis Star, Investor's Business Daily, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, Newsday (N.Y.), Omaha World-Herald (Neb.), Orlando Sentinel (Fla.), Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Rocky Mountain News (Denver), San Antonio Express-News, San Jose Mercury News, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Paul Pioneer Press, St. Petersburg Times (Fla.), Star-Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul), Tampa Tribune (Fla.), The Arizona Republic, The Arkansas Democrat Gazette (Little Rock), The Atlanta Journal – Constitution, The Baltimore Sun, The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio), The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Ky.), The Dallas Morning News, The Detroit News, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas), The Hartford Courant (Conn.), The Kansas City Star (Mo.), The Miami Herald, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The New York Times, The News-Gazette (Champaign, Ill), The Oklahoman, The Orange County Register (Calif.), The Oregonian, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), The Sacramento Bee, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.), The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Times-Picayune, USA Today