Innovation as a Parasitic Process: Towards Dark Organizational Theory

Abstract

Innovation studies has been enriched by recent engagement with Actor-Network Theory (ANT), which appears to share many concerns with the management of externalities and the enrollment of allies. But this approach nevertheless renders the question of where innovation comes from mysterious. Drawing on the work of Michel Serres, we develop a “parasitic” account of innovation, where third spaces, inscribed in material artefacts and visual representation, intrude into the innovation process. Illustrating our argument with empirical material derived from a study of Med Dialysis—a medical technology company based in the UK—we propose that parasitic interventions distribute order and disorder in a reversible fashion within innovative organizations. Anticipating and responding to the parasite is treated as a central process for managers and engineers who engage with a representation of the world that is “constitutively vague.” We conclude with a proposal for developing an application of Serres’ work in management and organization studies—a “dark organization theory.”

Full text

Knowledge Management
An International Journal
ORGANIZATION-STUDIES.COM
VOLUME 17 ISSUE 1
_________________________________________________________________________
Innovation as a Parasitic Process
Towards Dark Organizational Theory
JUAN ESPINOSA-CRISTIA AND STEVEN D. BROWN

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT:
AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
www.organization-studies.com
ISSN: 2327-7998 (Print)
ISSN: 2327-9249 (Online)
doi:10.18848/2327-7998/CGP (Journal)
First published by Common Ground Research Networks in 2017
University of Illinois Research Park
2001 South First Street, Suite 202
Champaign, IL 61820 USA
Ph: +1-217-328-0405
http://cgnetworks.org
Knowledge Management: An International Journal
is a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal.
COPYRIGHT
© 2017 (individual papers), the author(s)
© 2017 (selection and editorial matter), Common Ground
Research Networks
All rights reserved. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of study,
research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the applicable
copyright legislation, no part of this work may be reproduced by any
process without written permission from the publisher. For permissions
and other inquiries, please contact support@cgnetworks.org.
Common Ground Research Networks, a member of Crossref
EDITOR
Peter Kell, Charles Darwin University, Australia
MANAGING EDITOR
Amanda Sabo, Common Ground Research Networks, USA
ADVISORY BOARD
Angel Algarra, Universidad CEU San Pablo, Spain
Zainal Ariffin, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia
David Boyd, Northeastern University, USA
Rob Brooks, Monash University, Australia
Bruce Cronin, University of Greenwich Business School, UK
Cristina Elorza, Universidad CEU San Pablo, Spain
Andrea Fried, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany
David Gurteen, Gurteen Knowledge, UK
Sabine Hoffmann, American University of the Middle East, Kuwait
Stavros Ioannides, Panteion University, Greece
Margaret Jackson, RMIT University, Australia
Devon Jensen, Georgia Southern University, USA
Martyn Laycock, University of Greenwich, UK
Jennifer Rindfleish, University of New England, Australia
Alexandra Roth, Northeastern University, USA
Claudia Schmitz, Cenandu Learning Agency, Germany
Kirpal Singh, Singapore Management University, Singapore
Dave Snowden, Cognitive Edge Pte, LTD, USA
David Szabla, The George Washington University, USA
Alan Zaremba, Northeastern University, USA
PEER REVIEW
Articles published in Knowledge Management: An International
Journal are peer reviewed by scholars who are active participants of
the Organization Studies Research Network or a thematically related
Research Network. Reviewers are acknowledged in the co rresponding
volume of the journal. For a full list, of past and current reviewers
please visit www.organization-studies.com/journals/edito rs.
ARTICLE SUBMISSION
Knowledge Management: An International Journal
publishes quarterly (March, June, September, December).
To find out more about the submission process, please visit
www.organization-studies.com/journals/call-for-papers.
ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING
For a full list of databases in which this journal is indexed, pl ease visit
www.organization-studies.com/journals/collection.
RESEARCH NETWORK MEMB ERSHIP
Authors in Knowledge Management: An International Journal
are members of the Organization Studies Research Network or a
thematically related Research Network. Members receive access to
journal content. To find out more, visit
www.organization-studies.com/about/become-a-member.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Knowledge Management: An International Journal
is available in electronic and print formats. Subscribe to gain access to
content from the current year and the entire backlist.
Contact us at support@cgnetworks.org.
ORDERING
Single articles and issues are available from the journal bookstore at
www.cgscholar.com.
HYBRID OPEN ACCESS
Knowledge Management: An International Journal
is Hybrid Open Access, meaning authors can choose to make their
articles open access. This allows their work to reach an even wider
audience, broadening the dissemination of their research. To find out
more, please visit
www.organization-studies.com/journals/open-access-articles.
DISCLAIMER
The authors, editors, and publisher will not accept any legal
responsibility for any errors or omissions that may have been made in
this publication. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein.

Knowledge Management: An International Journal
Volume 17, Issue 1, 2017, www.organization-studies.com
© Common Ground, Juan Espinosa-Cristia and Steven D. Brown, All Rights Reserved
Permissions: support@cgnetworks.org
ISSN: 2327-7998 (Print), ISSN: 2327-9249 (Online)
Innovation as a Parasitic Process: Towards Dark
Organizational Theory
Juan Espinosa-Cristia, Universidad Andrés Bello, Chile
Steven D. Brown, University of Leicester, UK
Abstract: Innovation studies has been enriched by recent engagement with Actor-Network Theory (ANT), which appears
to share many concerns with the management of externalities and the enrollment of allies. But this approach nevertheless
renders the question of where innovation comes from mysterious. Drawing on the work of Michel Serres, we develop a
“parasitic” account of innovation, where third spaces, inscribed in material artefacts and visual representation, intrude
into the innovation process. Illustrating our argument with empirical material derived from a study of Med Dialysis—a
medical technology company based in the UK—we propose that parasitic interventions distribute order and disorder in a
reversible fashion within innovative organizations. Anticipating and responding to the parasite is treated as a central
process for managers and engineers who engage with a representation of the world that is “constitutively vague.” We
conclude with a proposal for developing an application of Serres’ work in management and organization studies—a
“dark organization theory.”
Keywords: Materiality, Innovation Studies, Post-ANT, Serres, Zero Objects
Introduction
he central aim of the present paper is to open up the black box of innovation studies from
the perspective of what has been called “Post Actor-Network Theory” (Gad and Jensen
2010). Over the past two decades, Actor-Network Theory (ANT), an approach originally
formulated with science and technology studies (STS), has been extensively applied within
management and organization studies. The key idea of ANT is to analytically suspend
distinctions between humans and non-humans, such as artefacts, in studying complex, hybrid
networks of activity (Latour 2005). These “Actor-Networks” are distributed sets of relations
between heterogeneous elements—or simply “actants”—whose qualities and capacities are
relationally shaped by one another.
This kind of approach is well suited to providing critical accounts of innovation.
Traditionally, innovation studies has been concerned with using cross-disciplinary approaches to
treat technological innovation as a myriad of actions, negotiations, and micro decisions in the
making (Christiansen et al. 2009). The dominant view in the area is that the outcome of these
processes is difficult to predict in advance (Dodgson, Gann, and Salter 2008). For example,
David Teece’s (1986) highly influential work emphasizes that innovative firms may not reap the
greatest economic returns from their investment; competitors may instead out-perform the
innovator. The “winner,” for Teece, is the organization that successfully manages a range of
materials and processes that might otherwise appear to be external to technological innovation
per se, such as complementary assets structure and market entry management (Teece 2006). The
approach has some resonance with the ANT treatment of scientific and technological
development (Akrich, Callon, and Latour 2002).
However, despite this apparent similarity, one of the points of difference is that innovation
studies that follows the framework established by Teece tends to have little to say about the
foundations of technological innovation ideas themselves. It is the appropriation of technology
through legal means and management of exogenous factors, such as contracts with external
providers, that is often crucial (Pisano 2006). ANT, by contrast, tends to pose fundamental
questions around the activities of networks (Law 2002). From an ANT perspective, the detailed
T

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: AN INTERN ATIONAL JOURNAL
technological choices that constitute the design process for products and technologies are central
points for analysis (Akrich, Callon and Latour 2002).
Technologies are, typically, co-configured or reciprocally shaped by relationships between
users and designers (Mackay et al. 2000). But rather than attend this as something that emerges
subsequent to the moment of innovation, ANT directs our attention to how this negotiation
occurs at a micro-level throughout the entire process. Designers and engineers continuously
anticipate and engage with “external” users and consumers prior to the emergence of any given
knowledge or technical outcome. Moreover, artefacts and non-humans are themselves
participants within these processes, lending and withdrawing their forces to the emergent
organizational trajectories (Callon 1984).
In this paper we aim to show how the technological innovation process at Med Dialysis
consists of a complex weaving together of relations between managers, engineers, artefacts, and
anticipated users during the formative stages of designing a self-care technology. Our particular
focus will be on how a number of visual artefacts—graphs, diagrams, and forms—act as the
means for both settling and unsettling anticipated programs of action. However, we are mindful
in our analysis of objections typically raised to how ANT is potentially applied in an
organizational setting (Krarup and Blok 2011). ANT analyses often attempt to distinguish
between success and failure, using the capacity of networks to extend themselves through
enrolling allies as the key criterion. But this formulation of the problem appears to neatly oppose
order and disorder, such that achieving a high degree of coherence among diverse relations—
sometimes called “heterogeneous engineering”—is seen as the means for a network to achieve
dominance (Law 1986). Contemporary formulations of ANT, usually termed Post-ANT, have
stepped back from this and have tended to emphasize instead that networks are semi-stable
arrangements of order and disorder together (Law 2002).
The work of Michel Serres has exerted considerable influence on the development of ANT
(Brown 2002). The meaning that he accords to the term “translation,” as the exchange of
qualities that occurs when things are moved across sites of relational definition, was fundamental
to the early formulation of the approach (Callon 1981). His lengthy philosophical and literary
musings on how sociality arises from the way humans relate to objects structured the key idea of
“technical mediation” (Latour 1994), which arguably underpins much of the material turn in
contemporary social science. Despite this early influence, much of what might be seen as radical
in Serres’ work became lost in the increasing formalization of ANT.
Michel Serres and Parasitic Logic
Interestingly, post-ANT authors and fellow travelers have found that returning to Serres’ work
has assisted in developing analyses that are sensitive to ontological multiplicity and contingency
or order upon disorder. Rhodes and Price (2011), for example, demonstrate that bureaucratic and
post-bureaucratic organizational practices are not in opposition but are rather parasitically
dependent upon one another. Lezaun (2012) has shown how environmental regulations become
both unsettled and complexified by parasitic relations between insect organisms and humans.
Eriksson’s (2008) use of the central Serrean noise approach to communication and organizations
reassembles the parasitic relation between noise and message. Our analysis extends this line of
thinking into the innovation process. Since Serres’ work remains comparatively under-developed
within management and organization research, we offer here a brief outline of his
conceptualization of parasitism.
Serres argued persuasively across the work comprising the Hermes series that classical
western philosophy downplays the role of the “third party” or “third man” in discourse. Platonic
dialogue, for example, usually sets up an argument between interlocutors where one party is
subordinate to the other. Socrates will guide, cajole, and beat his opponent into seeing the
wisdom of his words. But how is it possible, Serres wonders, for two opposing parties to ever
2

ESPINOSA AND BROWN: INNOVATION AS A PARASITIC PROCESS
reach the position where one can embrace the perspective of the other? In practice this comes
about through constituting a third position, a provisional grounds upon which the parties can
rehearse their respective positions on the matter in hand. For example, in the Meno dialogue,
Socrates rescues Meno from the confusion he has fallen into by having a slave attempt to solve a
geometric puzzle drawn in the sand (Serres 1995). Both the material symbol and the slave are
usually taken as incidental to the dialogue—they are simply there to enable Socrates to
demonstrate his brilliance. But Serres argues that without this mediator, Socrates would not be
able work his relationship with Meno. The intermediaries of the puzzle and the third person
facilitate the relationship. What is more, they do not simply support it but also, to a certain
degree, interrupt and transform the relationship. The intermediary is then, in a sense, the very
grounds upon which the Socrates-Meno relationship becomes possible. As Serres puts it: “A
third exists before the other … I have to go through the middle before reaching the end. There is
always a mediate, a middle, and intermediary” (Serres 2007, 57).
The challenge for Serres is to rethink relationality from the position of “the third,” the
intermediary or mediator. Serrres uses the term “parasite” to refer to this third position because
of its useful polysemic qualities. A parasite is literally that which is off to one side (“para”) of an
event (“site”). Consider a host at a dinner party (Serres 2007). The host is enjoying the flow of
conversation until without warning a telephone starts to ring in an adjoining room. At first the
host tries to ignore the interruptions and struggles to maintain the conversation. But as the
telephone continues to ring, the host begins to wonder whether they should in fact answer the
call. As they do so, there is a sudden reversion. It is the chatter of the guests that is now “noise”
as the host tries focus on the voice at the end of the line. Serres’ point is that the relationship
between signal and noise, clarity and interruption, order and disorder is not a given but can be
reversible depending on the position that the speaker/listener adopts in the communicative
system. The critical juncture comes from moving to the boundary, or the third space. It is
precisely at the moment when the host is between the dinner table and the ringing phone that the
mixture of signal and noise is at its peak before becoming settled one way or another.
The dinner party example demonstrates another meaning to the term parasite. In French it
can be used to refer to “static” or a noise that interrupts a signal (Brown 2013). The parasite is
that which allows for meaning by offering a third space where differences can be brought into
contact with one another, but it is also a space of ambiguity, threatening to disrupt the existing
order. It is the threat of disturbance that is central to yet another meaning of the parasite, the
“uninvited guest” or “social parasite.” We are all familiar with occasions where our
conversations or activities are interrupted by another who seeks to place him/herself in the
middle of what is happening. Yet we are also familiar with different sociocultural strategies and
practices for managing this potential incursion into our relationships, ranging from discourses of
polite refusal to those of managing how we sit with one another to reduce the physical space for
potential intrusion. Serres (2007) expands this into a general cultural model. He argues that if it is
given that parasitism is always possible in our relationships, if there is always a potential free
rider, then the exclusion of the parasite is a fundamental aspect of all social relations, from
shared meals to marriages to national borders. But even here, the role of the parasite is not
straightforward. Serres retells another fable, where a homeless person sits under the kitchen
window of a restaurant, whose hunger is sated for a while with the smells wafting outside. An
angry kitchen hand comes out to drive him away, accusing him of taking something for nothing.
Into this scene steps a third person, who offers a neat resolution. The third person takes a coin
and spins it on the pavement: “The sound of the coin will be payment enough for the smell of the
food.” In this way, the third person, the parasite, makes an exchange possible where none
previously existed and “the parasite invents something new. Since he does not eat like everyone
else, he builds a new logic” (Serres 2007, 35).
Furthermore, “The parasite adopts a functional role; the host survives the parasite’s abuses
of him – he even survives in the literal sense of the word; his life finds a reinforced equilibrium,
3

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: AN INTERN ATIONAL JOURNAL
like a sub-equilibrium. A kind of reversibility is seen on the ground of irreversibility. Use
succeeds abuse, and exchange follows use. A contract can be imagined” (Serres 2007, 168). In
this quotation, Serres makes an interesting turn on the logic of production. We usually
distinguish between the logic of producers, who have something to exchange, and that of
parasites, who “take without giving.” Now as we have seen, it is not really the case that parasites
give nothing back. Instead what they give is unexpected, novel, and ambiguous. As a corollary,
Serres argues that strictly speaking producers do not “make” anything. We are all of us parasites
upon the energies of the natural world, who extract value from the environment with little
thought to giving back. If “exchange value” is in some sense parasitic on “use value,” then
production is itself parasitic on the forces of nature, or, as Serres has taken to calling it, “Biogea”
(Serres 2012). What we call social order is merely the swapping of positions in the endless
unfolding of a chain of parasitic relations, where we seek to exclude and parasitize from one
another. In this way, the parasite is, as Serres puts it, “the atomic form of our relations.”
To sum up the relevance of all this for organization’s analysis:
1) All relations are mediated and require the intervention of a third space or
intermediary that is “off to the side” of the matter in hand.
2) The intermediary restructures the relationship between order and disorder. We can
only establish what is meaningful and what is not through including this third,
parasitic space.
3) Interruption provokes a reaction that forces relationships and systems into new
forms of equilibrium. Given the inevitability of parasitism, all of our relationships
are structured around the capacity to exclude the uninvited or unanticipated.
4) The parasite is a source of novelty. It forces our relationships to turn in new
directions and in so doing opens up hitherto unexpected connections.
5) Fundamentally, we are all parasites or mediators. However, on any given occasion
we can either play the role of the one who is being parasitized or the one who
parasitizes, but these positions are reversible and mobile.
We want to build a parasitic theory of technological innovation in organizations using these five
points. Following Brown (2013), we would like to offer the term “dark organization theory” to
name the kind of theorizing that might be done on this basis. The next sections offer an
explanation about research methodology.
Methodology
Research Question and Objective
This paper is part of major research project led by the research question: What forms of
prospective technological innovation configurations emerge from the assemblage of engineers,
technicians, managers, and non-human entities within venture medical healthcare companies?
The paper’s research objective is to open up the black box of technological innovation
organization processes in a nascent medical technology company using the perspective of “Post
Actor-Network Theory.” As discussed previously, post-ANT is understood based on the ideas of
Serres (1982) and Brown (2002).
A Performative Analitic Disposition
Following Casper Bruun Jensen, analysis embraces a performative disposition. Such disposition
requires us to take with seriousness all the effects that we have on the object of study. The first
part of the notion (i.e., performative) is related to the ANT tradition. As many theorists of this
line of thought (among others, Bruno Latour, John Law, and Michel Callon) have influentially
4

ESPINOSA AND BROWN: INNOVATION AS A PARASITIC PROCESS
demonstrated over the past thirty years, research practices enact rather than merely describe
reality. The second part of the notion (i.e., disposition) is understood not as the concepts of a
theory or an approach but rather as a tendency or proclivity. The disposition demands any
researcher to be prone and awake regarding the performative phenomenon. This disposition has
to do with the possibility of performativity. As a consequence, scholars need to be open to the
phenomenon becoming.
A performative disposition follows the general analytical approach that considers the
mediation of tools and their performativity within the analysis process. It is precisely in relation
to this issue that ANT could be of use in the present thesis. ANT uses a definition of mediated
action that includes artefacts, diagrams, and any other actants involved in the scene where the
process of technological innovation is carried out. As Reavey and Brown (2009) have shown in
the study of memory such a concept of mediation inherits the philosophical tradition of Michel
Serres (2007, 1995), processes from the line following Alfred North Whitehead (1929), and the
material semiotics of Greimas as interpreted by Latour and John Law (2008).
Discourse and Non-discursive Phenomena Are Entangled
Following Foucault, Brown demonstrates that there are complex relations between texts and
images. In fact, Brown claims that Foucault Magritte’s puzzle example shows a “subtle
interdependency between the text and the image on the painting” (2001, 178). Also, as Stenner
and Brown (2009) convincingly argue, it is the assumption that discourse is the origin, the sense
and the place where this sense is produced. This is an assumption that leads to the problem of the
bifurcation of nature explored at length by Whitehead. The complex relation between discourse
and the image in Magritte’s puzzle is based on what Brown (2001, 179) calls “mixed ensembles
of variable elements” or multiplicities. For Foucault discourse is not concerned with a pre-
formed world. Instead it is “an active process of composition” (Brown 2001, 180) where
heterogeneous elements like the discursive and the non-discursive are mixed together.
Following Brown (2001), there is a need to “experience” the performance of the painting to
understand the truth of the art. This is not something that happens at the level of the
representation. The concept of performativity is useful in solving the puzzle between the non-
discursive and discursive that any account of social phenomena brings to the analyst. Whether it
is discursive, non-discursive, or a mixture of both, the important issue is to grasp the
performativity of the assemblage. Language does not represent but rather performs or enacts
“incorporeal transformations.” The linguistic and material turns are complementary. This is
particularly true for the notion of “implicature,” a notion that emerges from the pragmatic
linguistic turn developed in the 1950s and 1960s by the work of John Austin and the work of
John Searle (2000).
Empirical Methods
Empirical material is drawn from a fieldwork about innovation in a medical technology company
in the Midlands of the UK. The company to which we have given the pseudonym “Med Dialysis”
is involved in designing self-care technologies for the home management of renal failure. Data
collection included in-depth, open-ended interviews with key informants from Med Dialysis, the
examination of pertinent organizational documents, and direct observation at the companies.
Twenty-four in-depth interviews where more than thirty hours of conversations with key
informants, including Med Dialysis staff (managers, engineers, and technicians) and
representatives from agencies that participated in the Midlands industry of healthcare technology,
were completed. Med Dialysis is composed of eighteen engineers and technicians working to
develop and commercialize medical technology. Individuals were selected based on their
participation in the technology development and commercialization of both organizations.
Additional contacts were identified by using the snowball or chain sampling technique, in which
5

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: AN INTERN ATIONAL JOURNAL
interviewees provided the names of others who could give additional insight into processes and
issues (Caudle 2004). Confidentiality was assured by anonymizing interviews. The research also
followed a strict code of ethics using informed consent forms for each participant. Table 1
provides data about the interviewees.
Table 1: Details of Interviewees
Number of Interviews
Gender
Age
Organization
Comercial Manager
2
Male
42
MedDialysis
General director
2
Male
58
MedDialysis
Engineer/inventor
1
Male
60
MedDialysis
Quality manager
2
Male
50
MedDialysis
Risk manager
2
Male
39
MedDialysis
Project manager
2
Female
35
MedDialysis
Engineer mechanic
2
Male
43
MedDialysis
Fluids technologist
2
Male
53
MedDialysis
Technician Fuids
2
Male
45
MedDialysis
Technician Chemistry
2
Male
47
MedDialysis
Technician–IT
1
Female
30
MedDialysis
Manager
2
Male
36
Technology Park
Manager
2
Female
35
Medilink
TOTAL
24
Source: Author 2014
Documents related to a series of procedures and flows of action were collected and analyzed.
Interviews were audio taped. At the time of the interviews, additional interviewee time for
follow-up questions or clarifications was requested and took place after interviews, normally a
week later. Some executives and technicians were interviewed twice to clarify ideas.
Furthermore, before and after the completion of each interview, impressions and observations
were recorded in field notes. Later on, interviews were transcribed, and interviewees were given
an opportunity to review transcripts. Nvivo 9 software was used for data organization and
preliminary data analysis.
The Case of Med Dialysis
Ambiguous Visual Representations
Conversations with engineers at Med Dialysis are typically punctuated with reference to
drawings, both formal and informal. The engineers sometimes drew diagrams when responding
to questions by the researcher (I). These diagrams seemed to be doing some work in establishing
and building connections between the engineers and other actors. In the following example, the
researcher is interviewing the Chief Science and Technical Officer (CSTO). The whole setting of
the interview—and more generally of the organization at that time—was dominated by the
urgencies of preparing for an upcoming investors’ meeting. The engineers, managers, and
technicians of the company were obsessively focused on this future board meeting:
6

ESPINOSA AND BROWN: INNOVATION AS A PARASITIC PROCESS
Example 1: Med Dialysis Manager 15/06/2011
I: Interviewer/R: Respondent
1. R:
2. [So] there: a is been about four or five completely different users during the
3. life life cycle of this particular project
4. I:
5. mhm mhm mhm
6. R:
7. okay
8. I:
9. and and do you think that this changed the technology itself I mean the way that
10. you work or design or and and and actually [reduce ]
11. R: [after the] first step
12. I: aha
13. R: It’s not changed the technology
14. I: ah okay=
15. R: =very ah >well< I always tend to think that’s why I was trying to find this
16. diagram ((the respondent point to the issue that he has a diagram where the innovation
17. strategy is shown))
18. I: yeah year
19. R: >‘cos it explains those different avenues< (.) one thing that people don’t tend to
20. do
21. I: mmm
22. R: in a innovation (.) they focus on the innovation of the technology
23. I: mmm
24. R: they never innovate (0.1) the business model or the commercial model (0.9)
25. R: so=
26. I: >°very interesting°<
27. R: I decided >when we’ve got the technology< what drives the technology >so
28. what’s the
29. better mousetrap or whatever it is< rather than >what’s the better way of makin
30. money<
31. I: mmm
32. R: hh and actually there is it’s a stream of of thought when you have (.) an object
33. how do
34. you innovate (.) the business model
The interaction opens in the course of a discussion about how the potential users of the Med
Dialysis technology have changed during the time of the project. The interviewer then asks
whether this has had any impact on the technology. The attentive observer will immediately
recognize the manager’s hesitation and pausing. This question is clearly problematic in some
way, despite its referring to what might be thought of as ordinary in the development of a new
product/technology.
1
It is at this point that the CSTO makes reference to a diagram. He shows the
interviewer the diagram, which he glosses as providing an explanation of the “different avenues”
that might be explored in a strategically led innovation process.
What then is this diagram and in what ways does it allow the CSTO to manage what is
hearably a question he finds difficult to address? Woolgar (1996), drawing on
ethnomethodological principles, distinguishes two facets to any document, such as a diagram,
1
Regarding change and product development see, for example, Leonard-Barton (2007) and Brown and Eisenhardt
(1995).
7

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: AN INTERN ATIONAL JOURNAL
that may be in play in a given interaction. The document has both a “surface appearances” and an
“associated underlying reality.” As a visual representation, the diagram speaks to a reality but
clearly cannot encompass all of it in its material and symbolic inscription. The diagram offers an
account of a reality in a way that makes it relevant to the setting it inhabits. The gap between its
status as a representation and the world it purports to represent sets up a “constitutive
reflexivity.” It is a theory about the world, rather than the world itself, but a theory that
nevertheless can be presented as though it captured an underlying reality which is able to
authorize others to speak on its behalf.
We can see how the constitutive reflexivity offered by the diagram to the CSTO enables him
to make some fairly strong claims. The CSTO claims that there are two groups of innovators.
The first group is comprised of those managers who innovate in purely technological terms. The
second group is made up of managers who additionally innovate in their business model. The
diagram is then presented as a form of evidence that authorizes this claim, which goes to the
heart of the innovation strategy implemented at Med Dialysis. In effect, the CSTO is claiming
that the diagram makes it self-evident why the broader account of innovation is appropriate and
thereby constructs his position as an innovator who is responsive to changing processes in the
market and in society (Fuglsang and Sundbo 2012).
The diagram in Figure 1 below is a flowchart showing the steps as boxes of various kinds
and their order by connecting them with arrows. This diagrammatic representation illustrates a
solution to any given relevant problem. The start is a different color (phosphorescent green) and
from there onwards the flowchart shows boxes that represent generic processing steps. It is
interesting to observe the significant number of processes and how few “conditional decisions”
(represented by a rhombus in flowcharts) are included. If the idea generation (or “ideation”) is
the only possible conditional decision, this suggests that decision-making is fairly clear once
something has been hailed as a possible product innovation. At the other end of diagram, it is
impossible to known whether the phosphorescent green entities of the flowchart represent the
beginning or the end of the process because, in a normal flowchart, the beginning and the end are
normally represented by a terminator type of box—this is rounded, or represented as an oval.
The light blue processes in the diagram are significant in their number and indicate a coarse,
broad range of analysis (qualitative and quantitative) regarding many aspects of the market,
competitors, technologies, etc. Conversely, the diagram shows just one conditional decision that
is conceptualized as the ideation process.
Another interesting point is the use of red clouds and other red figures. Within this
flowchart, red clouds represent self-reflective instances, or at least questions about resources and
the possibilities for the company producing the innovation. This might even be a call to do
something, as is the case with the red cloud that makes the call to be “brave enough to ask the
question.” These are also used to remark upon certain things that could be connected with the
various processes—for example, in the process “identification of the market gap,” the related
cloud reads “quantitative,” inviting the production of a quantitative analysis of the market gap.
Finally, from a more general point, a cloud chart gives a sort of formalized graphical
representation of a logic sequence; therefore, the charts look to provide people with a common
language or else some references as to how to deal with a process.
8

ESPINOSA AND BROWN: INNOVATION AS A PARASITIC PROCESS
Figure 1: Innovation Pathway at Med Dialysis
Source: Author 2014
9

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: AN INTERN ATIONAL JOURNAL
What is interesting about this diagram is what we might call it “constitutive vagueness”
(Ashmore, Brown, McMillan 2005). There is certainly a lot of the world relevant to innovation
represented in the diagram—from legislation to government data to product specification.
However, the diagram suggests few practical activities or conditional decisions that might be
undertaken based on these diverse aspects of the world. Nor do the relations between the boxes
offer much by way of specifying how these things combine in the innovation process beyond
simply suggesting that they ought to be acknowledged. Most interesting of all is juxtaposition of
the rhombus “Ideation” with the rectangle “Specification,” on which is superimposed the phrase
“Problem Definition.” This is, surely, the very heart of the innovation process, but there is no
indication given in the diagram here of how this arises as anything other than the outcome of
conjugating a mass of varied data.
In short, it is difficult to see how such a vague and ill-defined material representation could
act to objectify the huge number of desires and concerns that make up the innovation process.
Even more curious, is how the CSTO in extract 1 offers the diagram as providing a self-evident
explanation of why changing the conceptualization of users several times during a project is not
problematic. Perhaps the constitutive vagueness of the diagram is precisely the source of its
efficacy. The diagram is a space off to the side of the organization—a “para-site.” Were it not so,
there would be no purpose in using it since it would merely describe the organization rather than
indicate its aspirations. It is a means by which the CSTO holds the entire world of innovation in
his hands while simultaneously being unconstrained by any specific obligations to think about
that world in a particular way beyond the rather ambiguous arrows and connectors within the
visual representation. To echo Serres, the diagram “works” because it “does not work.” It is a
blank object that depicts everything and nothing.
A parallel example from the work of Brian Rotman is useful here. In his cultural study of
mathematics of the “zero” figure, Rotman (1987) points to diagram the Tree of Life that appears
in the Kabbalah:
Figure 2: The Tree of Life
Source: Rotman 1987
10

ESPINOSA AND BROWN: INNOVATION AS A PARASITIC PROCESS
In the Kabbalah, the tree of life refers to the fundamental attributes through which “The
Infinite” reveals himself to the faithful. Many of these attributes, such as knowledge (daath),
appear to be shared in some sense by humans and the deity and can be given recognizable names.
But there is one attribute, usually called “the Kether” or “the Crown” that is difficult to translate.
For Rotman, the Kether is the supreme crown that acts as both origin and channel—the vehicle
through which The Infinite’s influence flows. It is, in one sense, nothing, a zero, simply the
means through which The Infinite comes to act. The Kether/Crown is a window, an aperture or a
hole through which divine light enters the world of relative existence from the absolute. We
might then think of the innovation strategy diagram as akin to a Kether figure. The diagram is
nothing and everything. It objectifies the vastness of what might be relevant to the innovation
process in a way that justifies its own existence. To merely read the diagram is to encounter what
the well-known innovation studies scholar Helga Nowotny (2007) refers to as all the
uncertainties inherent in the future, and to have them articulated in a way that authorizes one to
claim one is an “innovator.” The diagram names the “other-worldly” aspects of innovation that
are outside of actual developments that pass into the organization via its ambiguous inscriptions.
In this sense, considering the diagram of the innovation strategy as the Crown leads us to think in
a more general sense of objects that are defined as “blanks” or “dominoes” by Serres. These are
constitutionally indifferent objects (Brown and Middleton 2005) that confer upon relations a
sense of their grounding in an objective reality (Serres 1995).
The Artefact as a Parasitic Cascade
The next example is draw from an interview with the senior Project Manager at Med Dialysis.
The conversation is about the role of another diagram, the Self-Care Specification Hierarchy, in
informing technical specifications:
Example 2: Med Dialysis Project Manager 30/11/2012
I: Interviewer/PM: Project Manager
1. PM: yeah it’s interesting in in many startups companies what you find is that you join a
a
2. group of people that are creative and have appetite (.) and have some skills and you
3. want to be able to join and go on a journey and I think what’s what’s important is to be
4. able to articulate the goals and to anticipate any pitfalls along that route now um there’s
5. loads of things that we will discover lots of unknowns in going from A to B to getting
6. uh to our final goal and I think all the tools and all the behaviors that we um should be
7. developing and exhibiting should help us to answer those questions sooner rather than
8. later so everything that we’ve we’ve talked about the specification hierarchy and the of
9. course management system
10. I: yeah
11. PM: the gateway process and the project plan and the self-care specification and the
12. technical specifications etc etc should help us as um milestones on that route
13. I: okay
14. PM: they are tried and trusted methods or tools of been used in other industries very
15. successfully and all we’re doing here is adapting it to our purposes um with a view to
16. making the picture clear because um in our picture is there’s a lot of noise lot of lot
17. going on and the more we can um templatize things then the more easily we can
18. understand them and the more easily we can process the work it’s very difficult to get
19. away from putting a process in place
20. I: Yeah yeah yeah yeah
21. PM: and the natural tendencies of any startup group particularly if you’ve got a bunch of
11

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: AN INTERN ATIONAL JOURNAL
22. engineers together is to create and come up with idea and produce things
23. I: right
24. PM: not to um hone it down and sort things and sift and refine and then say oh I can’t
finish
25. that because the temptation is always to do a better widget whatever it happens to be
26. I: okay
27. PM: um you know we need to get past that process so you know I found myself tempted
by
28. the dark side too
29. I: hhhh
30. PM: but I know in the companies that I’ve worked with before and having you know
had a
31. major hand in starting up the medical device company and growing it and then getting
32. the product CE marked and FDA approved and then being part of the team the float of
33. the company you know I know what we did right along that way and what we did we
The project manager offers a linear model of innovation development. First, there is the
design engineer’s idea about the new technology, then the idea is conceptualized, and finally, the
engineers work together along a sort of messy pathway to produce the technologically novel
product. Second, after the question regarding the use of the SSH diagram (see Figure 3), the
project manager explains and elaborates on a series of categories about his view of start-up
projects and those who work in those environments. Such categorization is important because it
divides the engineers who work at the venture into two groups. On one side, he sees order as
incarnated in those engineers organizing the venture company. In fact, he classifies these
engineers as the ones “putting a process in place.” In addition, he sees that this category of
engineers as where he belongs: “[I] think what’s important is to be able to articulate the goals and
to anticipate any pitfalls along that route now, um, there’s loads of things that we will discover,
lots of unknowns in going from A to B to getting, uh, to our final goal.” On the other side, there
are those engineers who “in many start-up companies what you find is that you join a group of
people that are creative and have appetite (.) and have some skills.”
The groups are further defined by the use of terms like “dark” and “bright.” The project
manager makes reference to his personal history, using the expression: “Um, you know we need
to get past that process, so you know I found myself tempted by the dark side too.” For the
project manager, those engineers who work for venture companies and “are creative and have
appetite” are part of the dark side. Here dark is equated with disorder. Furthermore, analogously,
he is one of those engineers who puts processes into place and is on the “bright side” or the side
of order. But this relationship is somewhat reversible. Because project manager admits to having
been tempted himself by the “dark side,” the question then is how to manage the potential
reversibility between order and disorder, noise and signal?
As in the last extract, the apparent answer seems to be via the mediation of a visual
representation, another diagram. The Self-Care Specification Hierarchy (SSH) is a controlled
document. This means that, under the ISO quality norm, the diagram needs to present a serial
number and state its revision/version number. It is a summary of a large number of documents
that refer to the technical and commercial specifications of the parts, their designs and
production, and the commercial process—among others—for the technological innovation that
the company is developing, for example, the SSH (see Figure 3) displays specifications SC-
00143 of the Model 101User Requirements, the SC-00009 User Requirements, the SC-00014
Self-care Family Product DNA, and finally, the SC-00059 Dialysis Standards for SelfCare.
12

ESPINOSA AND BROWN: INNOVATION AS A PARASITIC PROCESS
Figure 3: The Self-Care Specification Hierarchy
Source: Author 2014
From these general documents, the SSH generates a sort of cascade, including the relations
with the complete set of specifications—among others—for the control of alarms in the machine,
the water circuit requirements, the enclosure requirements, and the peristaltic blood valve. From
this “second level,” as in an organizational chart, the SSH “builds” a model of the technological
innovation/new product. The SSH then generates a particular kind of mediation. It offers
information to those who work in the company (in particular, it informs the conversation of the
project manager). In fact, the diagram hangs on many of the walls within Med Dialysis, and
participants often referred to it in their day-to-day conversations. Therefore, it is important to ask
what kind of service is the SSH providing to those day to day conversations? At one level it acts
to organize unknowns, rather like the previous diagram of innovation strategy, and in so doing it
helps to reduce the potential complexity of the broad range of specifications and black boxes
down to a single model.
However, the SSH does not just simplify, it also complexifies Callon’s (2002) long
meditation on management tools because the tool brings additional complications due to the new
relations and activities that the diagram demands, for example, the work of maintenance/upgrade
and follow-up. The diagram also transports complication to Med Dialysis managers, engineers,
and technicians because the SSH diagram records, carries, and channels interactions through time
and space (Bencherki 2012; Latour 1996). In other words, this visual representation enables a
form of collectivity within Med Dialysis, but it also renders relationships within the collectivity
problematic because it crystallizes dilemmas around technical specifications and design in a way
that makes them appear intransigent. If the problem can be located within the SSH then it must
be properly addressed, irrespective of whether that problem is actually experienced as such by
some of the stakeholders involved. We must make the world resemble the diagram. In this way,
we can treat the SSH as a parasite or third party that intervenes in the relationships between
colleagues at Med Dialysis. Relationships between, say, engineers and managers, are never
direct. The SSH always stands between them. But how are engineers managing the change of the
whole process? The final analysis section centers the analysis on this important process.
13

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: AN INTERN ATIONAL JOURNAL
Managing Change
In this last extract we now turn towards the consequences of the disequilibrium set up by
parasitic provocations. In the next interaction, the CSTO is answering a question about a change
in specifications because of a potential change in user needs. Any change of a particular
specification triggers management quality requirements. These requirements conjugate
organizational aspects with issues of technical development. The introduction of any “change
note” demands a series of management actions. For example, the change note needs to be
formally given to the rest of the organization and, in many cases, to the vendors participating in
the co-development of the new product:
Example 3: Med Dialysis CSTO 04/08/2012
I: Interviewer/R: CSTO
1. R: >you could maybe< you first of all then have to rationalize say two of the uh eight
2. people in your survey say they don’t like the screen they can’t read the lettering first of
3. all you have to validate that they are statistically representative (.) not actually two per
4. cent of the eight but actually you know out of the 99
5. percentile or something and just by chance you got them involved you then sort of
6. legitimize their statements against the others in the survey and if you think it’s it’s
7. worthy then you have to sort of raise a change note (0.6) to action (.) a design change in
8. the specification
9. I: yeah
10. R: If you are a (0.1) formally that’s what you do if it comes late enough in the program
if if
11. you do it informally you don’t necessarily have to raise a change note it is still very-
12. very flexible you may
13. I: yeah yeah
14. R: >you don’t you don’t have to do that< you would change the specification
15. I: yeah yeah
16. R: but here at certain points in your model of product development is recurring then (.)
uh
17. things at some point are in a design freeze and therefore require a change note for you
18. to unfreeze the design and change the specification
19. I: mmm okay so so this is the more flexible or case by case part of the progress (.) that’s
20. no that’s no difference whether it’s ca:rs or fibre optic device or a metal device
21. I: ok
22. R: it’s just engineering stuff you know chemical engineer or (.) most engineering is just
(.)
23. Newton’s three laws of motion really it’s a Maxwell’s equations
In answering the question about the change of specifications, the CSTO responds by saying that
the first issue is to clarify the nature of data that has provoked the potential change. One must act
to “validate that they are statistically representative.” However, the CSTO account seeks to go
beyond the raw data and impute possible reasons why users might not be happy with the product
under development—perhaps “they don’t like the screen they can’t read the lettering first.” Here
we can see the CSTO exploiting the “constituent reflexivity” of the user data. It has some
grounding in an “underlying reality,” but it is not immediately clear exactly what that reality of
users’ experience is. The outcome of this reflection is that, in some cases, it is necessary to raise
a “change note.” This is a formal notification of an alteration in technical specifications that has
some binding power on how engineers are then able to proceed with the innovation process.
14

ESPINOSA AND BROWN: INNOVATION AS A PARASITIC PROCESS
But the CSTO offers an alternative. It may not be necessary to go down this route if the
problem comes “late enough in the program.” Instead, one can approach things in a way that is
“very, very flexible” adding that “if you do it informally, you don’t necessarily have to raise a
change note.” Later this is glossed as the “more flexible or case by case part of the progress.” We
might see here an echo of the classic distinction made by Henry Mintzberg (1979) between
“machine bureaucracy” and “adhocracy.” The machine bureaucracy works in a highly formalized
manner with many routines and procedures. By contrast, the adhocracy, or in a more general
sense post-bureaucracy, typically brings in experts from a variety of areas to form a creative,
functional team to deal with the potential problem. It is tempting to suggest that what the CSTO
says here gives support to the idea of Med Dialysis as an adhocracy. But as we have seen in the
previous section, the project manager offers an account of a highly bureaucratic structure,
dominated by adherence with externally set specifications.
So which is it? The answer seems to be both and neither. Order and disorder is a provisional
and situated accomplishment that is recognized in relation to a series of third spaces (para-sites)
that are inscribed in visual representations such as the Innovation Strategy diagram and the SSH.
These representations mobilize an external world in ways that provide justification and
accountability within Med Dialysis, that is to say their parasitic intervention within the
organization is a source of “constitutive reflexivity.” However, as we have seen, both diagrams
are “constitutively vague” in composition. They provide a supposed means of access to the
world, but they fail to mark what that access means nor what it should be practically oriented
toward. As the example of the Kether shows, third spaces are then fundamentally ambiguous.
They are sites through which versions of order and disorder are enacted, but they also disrupt and
invert the distribution of each. In this last extract, we can see that problems with user data
similarly provoke, but do so in a way that encourages the CSTO to think of ways to “outwit” the
potential disruption and seek informal solutions. In this way, as Serres argues, the parasite is a
catalyst for change. We might then say that the parasite is, ultimately, the real source of
innovation within the organization.
These two types of bureaucracy are interdependent of one another (Rhodes and Price 2011).
Moreover, between the two forms is a third, shadowy mode of organizing: the parasitic third
space that seems to lend its power to the formal and the informal, distributing their relative
values and governing their relevancy. This is a kind of bureaucracy that can be perfectly
conceived of as a “dark organization theory.” Technological innovation process does not so
much have a dark and light side, as two opposing positions separated by a curiously projected
space from the outside that is both nothing and everything. The third space is the real space of
power, which operates through its constitutive vagueness.
Conclusion: Towards a Dark Organization Theory
The argument we have made is for a Post-ANT analysis of innovation technological processes.
Numerous authors have proposed that technological innovation is overly concerned with the
management of externalities rather than with the admittedly mysterious character of what
innovation actually is and from where it comes. Sveiby, Gripenber, and Segercrantz (2012) argue
that the difficultly is compounded by the polyemic character of the term “innovation” itself.
What needs to be done, as Akrich, Callon, and Latour (2002) argue, is to look in detail at the
actual processes of marshalling technological artefacts into networks of relations. We are in
broad agreement with this position and have sought to look at the ways in which key materials
artefacts, in this case visual representations inscribed as diagrams, are mobilized to account for,
justify, and facilitate innovation processes.
However, our point of departure is around what ambiguity means in these particular settings.
ANT has typically dismissed the idea of mysterious origins and foundations. In the case of
innovation, it would be said that the question of “from where does innovation come” is a non-
15

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: AN INTERN ATIONAL JOURNAL
question. Innovation is an emergent accomplishment of building networks of relations and allies,
whether the innovation is an electric car (Callon 1981), subway systems (Latour 1996), or
military aircraft (Law 2002b). Any other answer is a deviation from the materialist-semiotic
approach, which has been such a great source of success for ANT theorists. We insist on posing
the question because without doing so we risk lapsing into an arbitrary empiricism where
innovation is whatever “successful” networks do. Drawing on Michel Serres, we have argued
that the distribution of order and disorder depends on the existence of a third space. While we
have drawn upon the example of the Kabbalah to flesh out this claim, there is in fact nothing
mystical at all about this third space. It is to be found in the constitution of parasitic
interventions—diagrams, images, artefact, data—which offer apparent access to an external
world but do so in a way that is “constitutively vague.”
A significant finding of this article lies in understanding technological innovation as a
parasitic process. However, the approach requires further empirical work. To set up a parasitic
theory of technological innovation demands it. All in all, the results are enough to trigger a
strong call for a dark organizational approach to the study of technological innovation and its
organizational processes. Following Stengers’ (2010) “cosmopolitical programme,” practitioners
need to think of innovation as a space of possibilities where humans and non-humans engage in
the emergency of new possibilities and where managers, engineers, and technology developers
take seriously connections between technological and social realms.
Results suggest that a thorough exploration of the parasite—in terms of Serres—may open
up an alternative vista for management and organization studies. Rather than seek to make
structural distinctions, or alternative appeals to a philosophically attractive but empirically weak
notion of “process,” we can make parasitic provocations and the responses they engender a
central focus of analysis. If, as Serres suggests, the parasite is the “atomic form of all our
relations,” then questions of social and institutional order might usefully proceed by empirically
working through what parasitism does in a given organizational context. As a consequence,
aligned with Brown (2013) we would like to offer the term “dark organization theory” to name
these potential investigations and the kind of theorizing that might be done on this basis. In so
doing we might find a different locus for a materialist conception of power.
REFERENCES
Ashmore, Michael, Steven D. Brown, and Katie MacMillan. 2005. “Lost in the Mall with
Mesmer and Wundt: Demarcations and Demonstrations in the Psychologies.” Science
Technology Human Values 30 (1): 76–110. doi:10.1177/0162243904270716.
Akrich, Madeleine, Michel Callon, and Bruno Latour. 2002. “The Key to Success in Innovation
Part I: The Art of Interessement.” International Journal of Innovation Management 6
(1): 187–206. doi:10.1142/S1363919602000550.
Bencherki, Nicolas. 2012. “Mediators and the Material Stabilization of Society.” Communication
and Critical/Cultural Studies 9(1): 101–06. doi:10.1080/14791420.2011.629419.
Brown, Shona L., and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt. 1995. “Product Development: Past Research,
Present Findings, and Future Directions.” Academy of Management Review 20 (2): 343–
78. doi:10.2307/258850.
Brown, Steven D. 2001. “Psychology and the Art of Living.” Theory and Psychology 11 (2):
171–92. doi:10.1177/0959354301112002.
———. 2002. “Michel Serres: Science, Translation and the Logic of the Parasite.” Theory,
Culture and Society 19 (3): 1–27. doi:10.1177/0263276402019003001.
16

ESPINOSA AND BROWN: INNOVATION AS A PARASITIC PROCESS
———. 2013. “In Praise of the Parasite: The Dark Organizational Theory of Michel Serres.”
Informática Na Educação: Teoria and Práticateoria and Prática 16 (1): 83–100.
Brown, Steven D., and David Middleton. 2005. “The Baby as Virtual Object: Agency and
Difference in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.” EPD Society and Space 25 (3): 695–715.
doi:10.1068/d354t.
———. 2006. “Words and Things: Discursive and Non-discursive Ordering in a Networked
Organisation.” In Doing Things With things: The Design and Use of Everyday Objects,
edited by Alan Costall and Ole Dreier, 193–208. London: Ashgate Publishing.
Callon, Michel. 1981. “Struggles and Negotiations to Define What Is Problematic and What Is
Not: The Socio-logic of Translation.” In The Social Process of Scientific Investigation,
edited by Karin Knorr, Roger Krohn, and Richard Whitley, 197–219. Dordrecht,
Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co.
———. 1984. “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and
the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay.” The Sociological Review 32 (S1): 196–233.
doi:10.1111/j.1467-954X.1984.tb00113.x.
———. 1998. “An Essay on Framing and Overflowing: Economic Externalities Revisited by
Sociology.” In The Laws of the Markets, edited by Michel Callon, 244–69. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers.
———. 2004. “The Role of Hybrid Communities and Socio-technical Arrangements in the
Participatory Design.” Journal of the Center for Information Studies 5 (3): 3–10.
Caudle, Sharon. 2004. “Qualitative Data Analysis.” In Handbook of Practical Program
Evaluation, edited by Joseph S. Wholey, Harry P. Hatry, and Kathryn E. Newcomer,
417–38. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.
Christiansen, John K., Claus J. Varnes, Birgitte Hollensen, and Birgitte C. Blomberg. 2009. “Co-
constructing the Brand and the Product.” International Journal of Innovation
Management 13 (03): 319–48. doi:10.1142/S1363919609002327.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1983. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Vol. 1: Anti-Oedipus.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Dodgson, Mark, David M. Gann, and Ammon Salter. 2008. The Management of Technological
Innovation: Strategy and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Eriksson, Kai. 2008. “Networks and the Philosophy of Noise.” Culture and Organization 14 (3):
279–92. doi:10.1080/14759550802270700.
Fuglsang, Lars, and Jon Sundbo. 2012. Innovation as Strategic Reflexivity. London and New
York: Routledge.
Gad, Christopher, and Casper B. Jensen. 2010. “On the Consequences of Post-ANT.” Science
Technology Human Values 35 (1): 55–80. doi:10.1177/0162243908329567.
Krarup, Troels M., and Anders Blok. 2011. “Unfolding the Social : Quasi-actants, Virtual
Theory, and the New Empiricism of Bruno Latour.” The Sociological Review 59 (1):
42–63. doi:10.1111/j.1467-954x.2010.01991.x.
Latour, Bruno. 1994. “On Technical Mediation.” Common Knowledge 3 (2): 29–64.
———. 1996. “On Interobjectivity.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 3 (4): 228–45.
doi:10.1207/s15327884mca0304_2.
———. 1997. “Trains of Thought: Piaget, Formalism, and the Fifth Dimension.” Common
Knowledge 6 (3): 170–83.
———. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-network-theory. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Law, John. 1986. “The Heterogeneity of Texts.” In Mapping the Dynamics of Science and
Technology, edited by Michel Callon, 67–83. UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
———. 1999. “After ANT: Complexity, Naming and Topology.” The Sociological Review 47
(S1): 1–14. doi:10.1111/1467-954x.46.s.1.
17

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: AN INTERN ATIONAL JOURNAL
———. 2002. “Objects and Spaces.” Theory Culture Society 19 (5/6): 91–105.
doi:10.1177/026327602761899165.
———. 2002b. Aircraft Stories: Decentering the Object in Technoscience. Durham and London:
Duke University Press.
———. 2008. “Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics.” In The New Blackwell
Companion to Social Theory, edited by Bryan Turner, 141–58, London: Wiley-
Blackwell.
Leonard-Barton, Dorothy. 2007. “Core Capabilities and Core Rigidities: A Paradox in Managing
New Product Development.” Strategic Management Journal 13 (S1): 111–25.
doi:10.1002/smj.4250131009.
Lezaun, Javier. 2012. “The Pragmatic Sanction of Materials: Notes for an Ethnography of
Legal Substances.” Journal of Law and Society 39 (1): 20–38.
doi:10.1111/j.1467-6478.2012.00568.x.
Mackay, Hugh, Chris Crane, Paul Beynon-Davies, and Doug Tudhope. 2000. “Reconfiguring the
User: Using Rapid Application Development.” Social Studies of Science 30 (5): 737–59.
doi:10.1177/030631200030005004.
Mintzberg, Henry. 1979. The Structuring of Organizations: A Synthesis of the Research.
Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Pisano, Gary. 2006. “Profiting from Innovation and the Intellectual Property Revolution.”
Research Policy 35 (8): 1122–30. doi:10.1016/j.respol.2006.09.008.
Rhodes, Carl, and Oriana M. Price. 2011. “The Post-bureaucratic Parasite: Contrasting
Narratives of Organizational Change in Local Government.” Management Learning 42
(3): 241–60. doi:10.1177/1350507610385765.
Reavey, Paula, and Steven D. Brown. 2009. “The Mediating Role of Objects in Recollections of
Adult Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse.” Culture and Psychology 15 (4): 463–
84. doi:10.1177/1354067x09344890
Rotman, Brian. 1987. Signifying Nothing: The Semiotics of Zero. London: Macmillan.
Searle, John. 2000. “What Is a Speech Act?” In Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language: A
Concise Anthology, edited by Robert J. Stainton, 253–68. Ontario: Broadview Press.
Serres, Michel. 1995. Genesis. Ann Arbor: Michigan Press.
———. 2007. The Parasite. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
———. 2012. Biogea. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing.
Stenner, Paul, and Steven D. Brown. 2009. Psychology without Foundations: History,
Philosophy and Psychosocial Theory. London and New York: Sage Publications
Limited.
Stengers, Isabelle. 2010. Cosmopolitics I. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Sveiby, Karl-Erik, Pernilla Gripenber, and Beata Segercrantz. 2012. Challenging the Innovation
Paradigm. UK: Routledge.
Teece, David. 1986. “Profiting from Technological Innovation.’” Research Policy 15 (6): 286–
305. doi:10.1016/0048-7333(86)90027-2.
———. 2006. “Reflections on ‘Profiting from Innovation.” Research Policy 35 (8): 1131–46.
doi:10.1016/j.respol.2006.09.009.
Whitehead, Alfred N. 1929. Process and Reality an Essay in Cosmology. Gifford Lectures
Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28. New York: The
Free Press.
Woolgar, Steve. 1996. “Reflexivity.” In The Social Science Encyclopedia, edited by Adam
Kuper, 725–26. Second Edition. London: Routledge.
18

ESPINOSA AND BROWN: INNOVATION AS A PARASITIC PROCESS
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Juan Espinosa-Cristia: Lecturer, Facultad de Economía y Negocios, Universidad Andrés Bello,
Santiago, Chile
Steve D. Brown: Professor, Social and Organisational Psychology, School of Management,
University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
19

Knowledge Management: An International Journal
investigates the dynamics of the contemporary
“knowledge economy,” and the ways in which
knowledge has become a key factor of production.
can produce tangible outcomes for the organization.
ISSN 4 47-95242327-7998
As well as papers of a traditional scholarly type, this journal
invites case studies that take the form of presentations of
management practice—including documentation of
organizational practices and exegeses analyzing the effects
Knowledge Management: An International Journal is a
peer-reviewed, scholarly journal.
Knowledge Management: An International Journal
is one of
three thematically focused journals that support The
Organization Research Network—its journals, book series,
conference, and online community. The journal investigates
the dynamics of the contemporary “knowledge economy”
and the ways in which knowledge has become a key factor
of production.