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Theories and research on the production of knowledge and societal change |
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In the last several decades as innovation and beyond this, knowledge production, has begin to change society in fundamental ways. Rather than our theories of society being built around variations on political economy issues such as power and wealth, increasingly knowledge determines how power and wealth are distributed. The rise of new technologies is fundamentally transforming society via its feedback consequences. Superficially, one can describe these changes as the replacement of all the various categories of social structure with the new categories of emotional ties as well as cognitive ones, networks of various kinds, and the importance of culture as new forms of social cement that hold society together. These changes require the writing of new theories and especially theories about social change. No where is this need more dramatic than in the current revival of institutional theory at the macro level with its over-reliance upon the concept of path dependency. The Center for Innovation is actively involved in the writing of these new theories around the following debates: Ø Institutional change vs. path dependency Ø The evolution of the dominant modes of coordination in society Ø Ways of describing institutional rules Ø Rewriting of a number of classic economic models
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