By comparing three types of hybrid organizations—18th-century scientific academies, 19th-century institutions of higher vocational education, and 20th-century industrial research institutes—it is the purpose here to answer the question of why new hybrid organizations are continuously formed. Traditionally, and often implicitly, it is often assumed that emerging groups of potential knowledge users have their own organizational preferences and demands influencing the setup of new hybrid organizations. By applying the concepts epistemic and academic drift, it will be argued here, however, that internal (...) organizational dynamics are just as important as changing historical conjunctures in the uses of science when understanding why new hybrid organizations are formed. Only seldom have older hybrid organizations sought to make themselves relevant to new categories of knowledge users as the original ones have been marginalized. Instead, they have tended to accede to ideals supported by traditional academic organizations with higher status in terms of knowledge management, primarily universities. Through this process, demand has been generated for the founding of new hybrid organizations rather than the transformation of existing ones. Although this study focuses on Swedish cases, it is argued that since Sweden strove consistently to implement existing international policy trends during the periods in question, the observations may be generalized to apply to other national and transnational contexts. (shrink)

Historians, philosophers, and physicists portray the 1920s and 1930s as a period of major theoretical breakthrough in physics, quantum mechanics, which led to the expansion of physics into the core of the atom and the growth and strengthening of the discipline. These important developments in scientific inquiry into the micro-world and light have turned historical attention away from other significant historical processes and from other equally important causes for the expansion of physics. World War II, on the other hand, is (...) often seen as the watershed moment when physics achieved new levels of social and technical engagement at a truly industrial scale. Historians have shown that military interests and government funding have shaped physics to unprecedented degree, and according to some, to the extent of discontinuity with earlier practices of research (Forman 1987; Kevles 1990; Kaiser 2002). In this vein, Stuart Leslie wrote, “Nothing in the prewar experience fully prepared academic scientists and their institutions for the scale and scope of a wartime mobilization that would transform the university, industry, and the federal government and their mutual interrelationships” (Leslie 1993, 6). While one can never befullyready for novelties, the contributors to this issue show that developments in interwar physics did prepare participants for their cold war interactions with industry and government. (shrink)