UC Berkeley

This dissertation draws on organizational theory and the sociology of knowledge to explore of the politics surrounding innovations. I examine three cases of innovation within organizational fields: laboratory biology in nineteenth-century Germany, alternative medicine in the antebellum United States, and the contemporary global market for asset-backed securities. Institutionalist theories suggest that change is set in motion by exogenous shocks, whereas relational theories treat change as the product of endogenous shifts in patterns of interaction. For each case, I bring together archival sources and quantitative analysis to investigate how organizations’ environment and networks predict the emergence of new field positions. I find that exogenous shocks can disrupt existing field positions, but new positions only coalesce when innovators are linked together through shared networks. The results carry implications for organizational theory, economic sociology, and the sociology of science.