When the impossible becames viable: Producing & exporting knowledge-intensive goods in underdeveloped countries. The organizational dimension in a socio-technical analysis of an Argentinean nuclear and space company (1971-2004)

MARIANA VERSINO; HERNÁN THOMAS; ALBERTO LALOUF

Turín

Congreso; The 5th Triple Helix Conference; 2005

Fondazione Rosselli

The more spread image about technological activity in peripheral countries is that knowledge-intensive productions are relatively uncommon, and low on innovation: the technology socially in use comes from abroad, while the technological intervention is confined to making adaptations to local conditions of production and consumption. However, it is possible to gather empirical information on the creativeness of local technology, in which the degree of innovation precludes these operations from being referred to as mere phenomena of ‘adaptation’, ‘redesign’, ‘diffusion’ or ‘mechanical transference’. In order to analyze this innovative dynamic, the paper focuses in the production and use of technological knowledge in an Argentinean company that has been able to generate capacities in various knowledge-intensive techno-productive targets. The firm has developed competences in the areas of design, development and construction of nuclear reactors for scientific research and radioisotope production, the production of space technology (satellites and observation systems), and industrial equipment and automation (chemical plants, the treatment of hazardous industrial waste). Based on a socio-technical approach, the paper considers the evolution of the formal and informal organizational structure of the firm and the co-evolution with its socio-technical trajectory.  The analyzed firm receives no state financing, and depends exclusively on the sale of services and equipment, and on construction contracts in Argentina and abroad. Company practice is, in this sense, equivalent to that of a for profit enterprise. The company is a relevant case in Latin America: §         it produces scientific and technological knowledge-intensive products; §         it is a viable company which has existed for three decades; §         it exports embodied and disembodied technology to both underdeveloped and developed countries; §         it has won international tenders in competitions with leading companies in their respective sectors from the United States, Germany, France, Japan and Canada.