Co-evolution of an emerging mobile technology and mobile services : a study of the distributed governance of technological innovation through the case of WiBro in South Korea
This thesis is a study of the development and uptake of an emerging infrastructural
technology: the mobile Wireless Broadband technology and service known as WiBro
in South Korea, and Mobile WiMAX internationally. WiBro has emerged through a
national development effort since the early 2000s. The commercial service was
launched in 2006. However, uptake fell far below initial expectations, only
succeeding in niche markets. This study was motivated by concerns about the
perceived gulf between development and diffusion and the ‘failure’ of WiBro.
However, this study seeks to go beyond the technology-driven perspective that
informs conceptions of diffusion gap: it aims to explicate the sociotechnical factors
leading to such a gap.
This study draws on Science and Technology Studies (STS) and in particular the
Social Shaping of Technology (SST) perspective, which provides tools to scrutinize
the interactions among the various interests and factors involved in the process of
technological innovation. The SST perspective goes beyond approaches that treat
technology as a static object to be developed and diffused. It provides tools to
examine the complex and dynamic forces that develop technical capacity towards
particular forms and uses. The ‘social learning’ perspective extends SST and
provides concepts to explore the changing dynamics over multiple cycles of
innovation. Here, Jørgensen’s concept of ‘development arena’ helps examine the
interlinked, yet dispersed and multiple spaces in which differing goals, motivations
and strategies of innovation players together shape technological innovation.
Through comprehensive analyses of a longitudinal study of WiBro, a broader view
of the process and the outcomes of technological innovation have been achieved.
Rather than viewing the technology as a stable object that would progress in a linear
manner through the stages of design, development, and diffusion, it has focused on
the process of shaping of WiBro through multiple cycles of innovation. Several
arenas of innovation were identified as diverse players sought to align their interests
towards exploiting the resources, capacities, and tools for innovation that seemed to
be available. In these spaces, conflicting and yet coevolving dynamics were
observed: one involving coordination through alignments of multiple interests, and
the other incorporating tensions and misalignments among the differing concerns,
aims and commitments towards the innovation. The complex dynamics involved a
multi-level game where the collective actions among the innovation players and their
individual strategies diverged to a degree. Furthermore, changing contingencies,
linked to shifting choices of innovation players, resulted in the deviation of the
innovation from the initial visions and aims.
The study thus illustrates the outcomes of highly divergent interactions at play in
innovation process and the mutual enrollment efforts of players that constituted the
distributed governance of innovation. Here the complex interplays among the
innovation players involved in multi-level games produced a gap between the
generic vision and the actual uptake of WiBro. Changing contingencies, especially
linked to broader and evolving structures and relations - brought about the reshaping
of the generic vision of WiBro. This research therefore suggests the concept
of the ‘distributed governance of innovation’ as a new mode for governance: that
accommodates not only differing knowledges and interests but also the shifting
choices and visions through the various cycles of technological innovation. The
boundary of social learning is thus extended to incorporate diverging choices over
time and across the multiple spaces of innovation. Its implications for policy include
achieving reflexivity by incorporating into the policy framework the learning process
that takes place as the innovation players go through the varying stages and cycles of
technological innovation
