Creating collective futures

how roadmaps and conferences reconfigure the institutional field of semiconductor manufacturing

Uli Meyer

Cornelius Schubert

Arnold Windeler

pp. 253-276

in: Hannes Kramer, Matthias Wenzel (eds), How organizations manage the future, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

Managing futures in the semiconductor industry is heavily predicated on their collective creation. Shared expectations need to be developed, technological options evaluated and strategic plans made. Our study is based on in-depth and long-term qualitative empirical research and examines how social and technical futures are created by organizing field-configuring events such as roadmaps and conferences. We view these events as part of the institutional work and institutional life within the organizational field of semiconductor manufacturing. Our analysis shows how the collective practices of creating and managing contested futures evolve in the field and how they configure specific modes of reflexive self-regulation. We draw on institutional and practice theory in order to contribute to a more general understanding of the collective practices of future-making and to situate them within overarching issues of legitimation, signification and domination.