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On Customers and Costs: A Story from Public Sector Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

John Law  and
Madeleine Akrich
John Law
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology and Social AnthropologyKeele University
Madeleine Akrich
Affiliation:
Centre de Sociologie de I'InnovationEcole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris
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Abstract

In this we explore some of the ways in which a state scientific laboratory (Daresbury SERC) reacted to the rtetoric and forces of the marketpace in the 1980s. We describe laboratory attempts to create what we call “good customers” while converting itself into a “good seller” by developing a particulat set of costing practicting that were closely related to the implementation of a management accounting system. Finally, we consider how Daresbury response to “market forces” influenced scintific and organzational practice, and arsponse that the social technologies of governmentality performed by accountancy — but also by scientific and bureaucratic practice are complex, discursively heterogeneou, and used in context-sensitive ways. This means, or so we suggest, that it is difficult to mount general argunents about “science” and “the market,” and that the use of such large-scale institions impedes impedes analysis.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1994 , pp. 539 - 561
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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