Mediating Instruments and Making Markets – Professor Peter Miller in Uppsala
Professor Peter Miller from the LSE visited the Uppsala University on September 20-22 to hold three lectures for his Swedish scholars. I attended the first one, which was on a yet not published paper called ‘Mediating Instruments and Making Markets: Capital Budgeting, Science and the Economy’.
In short, Professor Miller emphasised three issues that he felt needed to be addressed by researchers:
The practice of capital budgeting: Miller concluded that there has been small attention in research to how capital budgeting is performed in practice. He encouraged us to broaden the definition of research are to include the practice of managing and coordinating large scale investments in organisations. Miller also stated that there had been insufficient attention to view capital budgeting as an inter-organisational process.
The role of science in the development of capital budgeting: Miller pointed out that the theoretical concept of mediating instruments can explain indirect effects of the social contexts as well as links between science and the economy. Using perspectives like the STS or ANT helps us find the performative dimension of technology and “instruments, units, mathematical techniques, and other elements of everyday practice” (Wise 1988)
Instruments in the making of markets: during the seminar Miller called the attention to a closer focus on the making of markets, how it is organised in practice. He referred to Fligstein’s book ‘The architecture of markets’, pointing out that we both need to study rule-marking as well as market-making. But it was important to make the distinction that marker-making is more than rule-making, dependent on mediating instruments that influence the actions.
Concluding the lecture, Professor Miller gave us the following advice:
- Need of more empirical field studies
- Need to focus on inter-firm processes and practices – what they do
- Go beyond valuation and focus on management and coordination techniques in practice
In short, Professor Miller emphasised three issues that he felt needed to be addressed by researchers:
The practice of capital budgeting: Miller concluded that there has been small attention in research to how capital budgeting is performed in practice. He encouraged us to broaden the definition of research are to include the practice of managing and coordinating large scale investments in organisations. Miller also stated that there had been insufficient attention to view capital budgeting as an inter-organisational process.
The role of science in the development of capital budgeting: Miller pointed out that the theoretical concept of mediating instruments can explain indirect effects of the social contexts as well as links between science and the economy. Using perspectives like the STS or ANT helps us find the performative dimension of technology and “instruments, units, mathematical techniques, and other elements of everyday practice” (Wise 1988)
Instruments in the making of markets: during the seminar Miller called the attention to a closer focus on the making of markets, how it is organised in practice. He referred to Fligstein’s book ‘The architecture of markets’, pointing out that we both need to study rule-marking as well as market-making. But it was important to make the distinction that marker-making is more than rule-making, dependent on mediating instruments that influence the actions.
Concluding the lecture, Professor Miller gave us the following advice:
- Need of more empirical field studies
- Need to focus on inter-firm processes and practices – what they do
- Go beyond valuation and focus on management and coordination techniques in practice
posted by Svenne Junker at 9:21 pm
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