Steering with big words: articulating ideographs in research programs

Abstract

Nowadays, science should address societal challenges, such as ‘sustainability’, or ‘responsible research and innovation’. This emerging form of steering toward broad and generic goals involves the use of ‘big words’: encompassing concepts that are uncontested themselves, but that allow for multiple interpretations and specifications. This paper is based on the premise that big words matter in the structuring of scientific practice and it empirically traces how three ‘big words’ – ‘sustainability’, ‘responsible innovation’ and ‘valorization’ (a term closely linked to knowledge utilization) – steer research activities within a Dutch research program of nanotechnology that is explicitly related to societal challenges. To do so, the theory of articulation is extended with the concept of ideographs. We report on how the top-down steering ambitions of policy are countervailed by the bottom-up dynamics and logics of researchers. We also conclude that when ‘big words’ are used in an organizational and administrative setting, it changes their effects.

Keywords:

• articulation
• ideographs
• steering research
• nanotechnology
• sustainability
• responsible innovation
• valorization

1. Introduction

According to many, the science system is changing, and rightly so. The ideal of value-free curiosity-driven science – a myth indeed – has been replaced by science responding to societal concerns. While in the 1970s the idea of ‘mission orientation’ of scientific programs was popular, and was succeeded by the idea of strategic science to foster promising research areas, nowadays science should address societal challenges. Science, thus, should be responsible and refer to encompassing orientations, such as ‘sustainability’, ‘healthy aging’ or ‘responsible research and innovation (RRI)’. Increasingly, national and international research programs promise to address such broad and generic goals. Daimer, Hufnagl, and Warnke (2012) refer to this as the ‘orientation failure’ rationale, in addition to the market failure and system failure rationales for steering in science.

This emerging form of steering toward broad and generic goals involves the use of ‘big words’: encompassing concepts that are uncontested themselves, but that allow for multiple interpretations and specifications. This raises the question of how steering, or rather coordination, with such ‘big words’ occurs. On the one hand, one may expect to find research that only cosmetically relates to the big words and researchers performing ‘window dressing’ or taking a mainly cynical stance. On the other hand, one may imagine clear directives being derived from the overarching goals and logical top-down delineation of research agendas. Clearly, actual coordination with ‘big words’ will result in a situation located between these extremes. Local research practices will retain dynamics and a logic of their own, countervailing the top-down ambitions of research programs. At the same time, a purely cynical or opportunistic stance may be difficult to sustain in the light of changing funding schemes and an evolving rhetoric about scientific accountability. It therefore seems prudent to assume that local research practices will reorient and relate to ‘big words’.

While steering of local research practices may take place by various mechanisms we want to know what big words ‘do’. That is, we expect big words to be more than just signifiers of overarching goals, but carrying the ability to elicit and maintain forceful connections and specifications. Thus, this paper is based on the premise that big words matter in the structuring of scientific practice disregarding whether people ‘really’ believe in them or not and it investigates empirically how they matter. More specifically, we empirically trace how three ‘big words’ are articulated in reference to research activities within a Dutch research program on nanotechnology that is explicitly related to societal challenges. These three big words are ‘sustainability’, ‘responsible innovation’ and ‘valorization’ (a term closely linked to knowledge utilization). We use and refine van Lente and van Til's (2008) theory of articulation to understand the relative role of ‘big words’ and we mobilize the notion of ‘ideographs’ (McGee 1980) to build empirically grounded theoretical understanding of the connection between the logical and hierarchical structuring of terms and the sociological structuring of research practices.

In the next section, we introduce the setting of nanotechnology research programs surrounded by broad expectations. We use the theory of articulation (Section 3) enriched with an analysis of ideographs. After we delineate our methodological choices (Section 4), we report on how the three big words are articulated (Sections 5–7). In the last section, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

2. Hopes of nanotechnology

Around the end of the last century, nanotechnology became ‘the next big thing’ (Ratner and Ratner 2003). Nanotechnology was coined as an umbrella term (Rip and Voß 2013) for technologies studying or manipulating matter at the nanoscale. The many promises of applications made nanotechnology rise quickly as an important research field. These promises ranged from medical applications, to material properties, to renewable energy solutions, and were sustained by many large research programs being established in different countries.

Despite the positive promises, the rise of nanotechnology was also one of caution. In the aftermath of discussions about genetically modified organisms, where public scrutiny gave rise to deep controversies, proponents of nanotechnology did not want the same to happen in their field. This meant that most of the large nanotechnology research programs also addressed matters of public acceptance and included dialog initiatives. During that same period, studies showed that carbon nanotubes – one of the promising materials in the nanotechnology field – resemble asbestos fibers in lung tissue. This caused uproar about the safety of nanotechnology for human health and the environment. This also caused many of the public acceptance and dialog initiatives, which were initially meant to have a broad societal focus, to be mainly narrowed down to toxicological research into human health and environmental risks. Various policy responses to these and other concerns were brought together in the term ‘responsible innovation’, for example, in the European code of conduct for Responsible Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies Research (hereafter called the ‘EU-CoC’) (EC 2008).

Nowadays, the hopes of nanotechnology and other novel technologies are linked to an increasing pressure on scientific activities to lead to scientific or technological innovation that helps to tackle societal problems. This development is particularly pronounced in the current EU funding program Horizon 2020, which has seven sections explicitly dedicated to addressing societal challenges such as health and well-being, food security and climate action.¹ The associated funding schemes more or less explicitly require scientific research to lead to or at least advance innovations, i.e. knowledge that makes a demonstrable contribution to economic prosperity and societal welfare. The dominant reasoning behind this is that for science to become useful in the light of societal challenges, its output should be translatable into business models, societal impact, resource efficiency, health outcome and the like.

Certainly, the latest reorganization of EU-level research funding around societal challenges is the outcome of a long tradition of trying to reorient research toward societal needs. In the Netherlands, for instance, attention to economic utilization of university research started in the 1970s and became more concerted from the 1990s onward. Zomer and Benneworth (2011) describe what they call the ‘Dutch University Valorization Journey’: from the 1970s onward governments pushed toward more applied research, innovation and knowledge utilization, with specific grants and the establishment of the Technology Foundation STW to support universities with applying their research in market opportunities. It is in this context that the term ‘valorization’ was introduced to describe the economic utilization of scientific knowledge. This initial focus on economic values (i.e. profitability and patents) has been criticized, especially by researchers from the social sciences, and consequently, the concept of valorization has been extended to also include societal values. But the basic idea that scientific activities should address economic and social values, and that the value of science can thus be assessed in terms of defined indicators, is an idea that has gained considerable currency in Dutch research policies. Indeed, the Dutch organization of universities (VNSU) published a report in 2013 with a framework, which will be used to develop indicators of valorization:

Valorization is a broad concept and can come in many shapes. This framework should have the ambition to offer indicators for the full width of valorization. Next to the traditional ‘hard’ forms of valorization which are focused on economic exploitation (patents, licenses and spinoffs), there should also be room for often less easy to count (‘soft’) forms of societal value creation. (VNSU 2013, 9)

Against this background, we set out to investigate how key themes in this broader array of research governance are addressed by scientists and program committees working in the field of nanotechnology. We focus in particular on the three ‘big words’ to which the research in NanoNextNL (NNNL), a 250 million euro national program, has been connected – ‘sustainability’ and ‘responsible innovation’, which echo the political debate about the national research agenda on nanotechnology in an early phase, and ‘valorization’, reflecting the wish to continue the preceding research program NanoNed with a more application-oriented program. While these three now feature prominently as explicit goals, the question remains as to how these goals are actually interpreted and translated in the research practices and governance of NNNL. We will therefore investigate how these goals are articulated and in what context. In the next section, we discuss the analytical steps in our approach.

3. Theory: articulations and ideographs

For analyzing what ‘big words’ do in structuring research practices, we build on the earlier conceptual work of van Lente and van Til (2008) about the articulation of ‘sustainability’ in nanocoating research. Here, the articulation of sustainability is conceptualized as a process of both specification and legitimation. Since sustainability can mean many different things, it is constantly being specified as being usable in specific instances or actions. This means making a connection with the broad term of sustainability by stepwise narrowing it down to more specified descriptions. van Lente and van Til give the example of a research program claiming to promote sustainability, while in fact it supports research and development (R&D) of novel materials needed for fuel cells. It is consequently claimed that these fuel cells reduce energy consumption and are in this way connected to sustainability. Here fuel cells are a specification of sustainability. However, the connection to sustainability also gains legitimacy for the research direction. Since sustainability is seen as a ‘good thing’, claiming that your research is sustainable will also give it a positive connotation. As a consequence, however, sustainability becomes ‘not one, but many things’ (975).

By discussing the mechanisms of articulation, van Lente and van Til argue that articulation is more than reproduction: it structures (in the many specifications) and it legitimates (for better or for worse). By doing so, articulation exerts a force similar to the force exerted by science and technology promises, which constitute ‘prospective structures’ to be filled in with agency (van Lente 2006). In the same vein, Bos, Peine, and van Lente (2013) study ‘funnels of interest’ – often presented in the introduction of texts – by which the reader is caught by a broader interest and then led to more specific claims (Law 1986). They found various ways in which the broader interest in sustainability was connected to specialized research.

Clearly, sustainability is an overarching goal, and while its desirability can hardly be contested, the concept itself is highly flexible. Some have emphatically denounced the use of such ‘plastic words’, as Poerksen (1995) labeled them, while others have been intrigued by the capabilities of such flexible and value-laden words. To capture the value-laden aspect in words denoting encompassing orientations, we will draw on the notion of the ‘ideograph’, as introduced by McGee (1980). McGee developed the notion of the ‘ideograph’ for rhetorical studies to address the question of how certain words, such as ‘democracy’ or ‘freedom’, become the building blocks of ideology. These ideographs possess an unquestionable goodness, while their content is flexible and open, and only clear through their usage in specific contexts. As McGee claims:

No one has ever seen an ‘equality’ strutting up the driveway, so, if ‘equality’ exists at all, it has meaning through its specific applications. In other words, we establish a meaning for ‘equality’ by using the word as a description of a certain phenomenon; it has meaning only insofar as our description is acceptable, believable. (10)

Although in rhetorical studies the concept of the ideograph has received critical reception – for being a signifier without explanatory power – its conceptualization by McGee has received interest from scholars in science and technology studies (see, e.g. van Lente 1993, 2000; Rip and Voß 2013). According to McGee, language studies have shown that ‘Human beings are “conditioned”, not directly to belief and behavior, but to a vocabulary of concepts that function as guides, warrants, reasons, or excuses for behavior and belief’ (6). Studying the usage of sustainability, responsible innovation and valorization as current-day ideographs in the context of research and innovation thus seems to make sense, especially since McGee organizes his analysis of ideographs in a way that speaks to ‘specification’ and ‘legitimation’.

McGee distinguishes two mechanisms in articulations of ideographs: vertical and horizontal structuring. Vertical structuring refers to using earlier specific usages of the ideograph as a reference for what the ideograph means in a particular instance:

As the situations vary, so the meaning of ‘equality’ expands and contracts ( … ) Earlier usages become precedent, touchstones for judging the propriety of the ideograph in a current circumstance. (10)

Each time an ideograph is used, there is, more or less explicitly, a reference to an earlier use of the ideograph. According to McGee, each community works actively on recording and preserving the vertical structuring of the ideographs. Vertical structuring of ideographs sensitizes to the effort to preserve value in the ‘specification’ of big words.

Horizontal structuring refers to how ideographs relate to or even ‘clash’ with each other. McGee illustrates this with the Watergate conflict where Nixon refused to give documents to the Congress and ‘attempted to excuse himself by matching a second ideograph, [the] principle of confidentiality, against normal and usual meanings of rule of law’ (12–13). According to McGee, these clashes show the force that ideographs can exert. In terms of the theory of articulation, horizontal structuring of ideographs broadens the scope of ‘legitimation’: specific articulations of an encompassing orientation not only provide legitimacy, but also have to be legitimated with regard to other specifications or even other orientations.

The conceptualization and analysis of ideographs by McGee thus enrich the theory of articulation by van Lente and van Til, and seem to be useful for studying the articulation of ‘big words’. But should sustainability, responsible innovation and valorization be seen as ideographs? Sullivan (2010) identifies ideographs as: ‘terms that seem to invite contest, but do not among indoctrinated audiences. Symbolic gestalts containing ideological commitments. Words that have different meanings within different formations’ (3). He describes sustainability as fitting this description and states that sustainability over the years has lost some of its denotative content, but continued to have powerful connotative associations. Also Valkenburg (2012) identifies sustainability as a normative yet ambiguous word: ‘an idea that we can aspire and act upon because we pretend that it is unequivocal and unproblematic, even if it is not. It allows for disagreement and contestation, but still gives normative guidance in a more or less coherent direction’ (483).

While sustainability is a widely defined goal in research and innovation – and thus likely to turn up in nanotechnology as well – responsible innovation is a fairly new notion. It has been defined as a cross-cutting issue for the new EU Horizon 2020 program (where it is referred to as ‘RRI’), and the European Commission has issued a range of projects to help with understanding, monitoring and promoting RRI. The quick career of the notion of responsible innovation and the associated absence of established horizontal and vertical structuring are captured in the following quote from Owen et al. (2013): ‘Few would disagree that science and innovation should be undertaken responsibly. “Responsible innovation” intuitively feels right in sentiment, as an ideal or aspiration. ( … ) However, in reality, it lacks definition and clarity, both in concept and practice’ (27). On the one hand, this lack of clarity is linked to the difficulty of grasping ‘responsible’ in relation to innovation as a social and distributed process. On the other hand, a normative tension comes along with the very combination of ‘responsible’ and ‘innovation’, which by implication assumes that there is also irresponsible innovation.²

Valorization, finally, can perhaps best be characterized as an ideograph-in-the-making, at least in the Dutch/European context. The concept is being pushed by governments and the EU, with the idea that more economic profit should be generated from new scientific knowledge. While its desirability and the concomitant economic calculus are contested by some scientists, policymakers are consistently stressing the importance of valorization and seek ways to translate it into a condition for funding.

4. Methodology and case selection

While we now have qualified the notions of sustainability, responsible innovation and valorization as ideographs by highlighting some interesting features that would allow for such a qualification, it remains an empirical question if and how this would be the case within NNNL. Our aim, however, is not to verify whether or not the selected three ‘big words’ are fitting a precise description of the concept of ‘ideograph’, but to understand what these big words do in the structuring of research practices by analyzing them as ideographs. Hence, we use the concept of ideograph as a sensitizing concept.

Sensitizing concepts, a notion originally introduced by Blumer (1954), are used in qualitative research as interpretive devices and as a starting point for a study (Bowen 2006). In this sense, we used the concept of ideographs as a conceptual device to interpret empirical findings and connect them with theoretical and analytical notions. Consequently, we have selected our cases – sustainability, responsible innovation and valorization – based on their theoretical relevance to the effects of ideographs, following the principles of theoretical sampling (Flick 2009). The notion of ideographs has then helped us in elaborating theoretical insights about these effects.

More specifically, we have focused on the large Dutch nanotechnology research and innovation consortium NNNL. This consortium was founded in 2010, has a budget of 250 million euro and consists of all Dutch universities, many research institutes and university medical centers and approximately 100 companies. Within this consortium, micro- and nanotechnology are financed by both public and private funding. The program contains 10 broad research themes, divided into 28 programs, and is managed by a program office.

To capture the top-down and bottom-up dynamics of articulation, the analysis took place at three different levels: the policy level, for which we analyzed research policy documents³; the management level of the program office that was to execute the research policies and the researchers working in NNNL. At both the program office and researcher levels, in-depth interviews were conducted. Lastly, we observed working meetings and conferences to complete the analysis.⁴

The interviews with researchers took place in two groups of researchers. One of the researcher groups worked on solar panel projects, within the ‘Energy’ theme of the consortium. The second group of researchers worked on sensor projects, within the ‘Sensors and Actuators’ theme. We expected to find different forms of articulation: within solar panel projects articulation is likely to be more straightforward than within sensor projects. The solar panel project consisted of four subprojects and the sensor project consisted of six subprojects. In the solar panel case, 12 out of the 18 people who were involved in the project were interviewed. In the sensor case, this was 17 out of 26. We interviewed two people who worked at the program office.

Since within NNNL there is industry/university collaboration on all projects, not only the university researchers who participated were interviewed, but also many of the industry collaborators. These were the representatives from the company who were involved the most in this research program.

All the data were organized with the qualitative data analysis program Atlas.ti. We structurally coded and organized quotations to trace McGee's vertical and horizontal structuring. For the vertical structuring this meant looking at how the big words were specified and which terms were often connected with the big words. For example, in the next sections, we will present how solar panels are often connected with sustainability and safety with responsible innovation. McGee describes the horizontal structuring as the clashing of two ideographs. In the next sections, we therefore qualified instances as horizontal structuring when two of the big words were contrasted or when the big words were contrasted with other notions.

Since we intend to research what big words do, we described the vertical and horizontal structuring alongside the sociological context in which it took place. In this way, we try to capture the connection between the rhetorical nature of the big words and the sociological structuring of research practices.

5. Sustainability

The term ‘sustainability’ is widely present in recent research policies. In this chapter, we explore these policies, and also how they relate to the ways in which sustainability is articulated by two groups of researchers from the NNNL program.⁵

5.1. Vertical structuring

First, we investigated the vertical structuring in research policies and documents. As described, vertical structuring is a way of specifying the ideograph for a specific situation. In these policy documents, sustainability is often connected to two topics: water and energy technologies:

Breakthroughs exist in the areas of water quality, sustainable energy ( … ) (NNI 2008, 76)

Improved and entirely new types of solar cells will need to be developed for the efficient generation of electricity through photovoltaic conversion. (NNI 2008, 57)

An example of this is the development of nanofilters with super-fine holes to be able to filter out specific individual chemical substances from solutions. (Rijksoverheid 2006, 11)

The program office showed the same vertical structuring of sustainability as the policy documents. They mostly referred to the water and energy themes as being the most important for sustainability.

Consequently, we investigated which vertical structuring was present in the two groups of researchers. In the solar cell case, sustainability was seen as naturally good and clearly connected to the technology of solar panels.

Our projects are of course a very clear example: Everybody knows what a solar panel is and if you make those even better, then you're acting sustainably. (Ph.D., interview data, 2013)

For me, sustainability has something to do with caring for your surroundings, for the environment. Being energy efficient. Solar energy is I think one of the best examples. (Industry collaborator, interview data, 2013, 3)

Solar panels are presented as a vertical structuring of sustainability. This connection feels obvious and unquestionable for the interviewees. Bos, Peine, and van Lente (2013) describe this as a fixed funnel: ‘( … ) a line of reasoning, of connecting to sustainability, which is well established and consistently used for a particular technology’. This vertical structuring occurs frequently: solar panels have been referred to as sustainable many times, so the earlier usages of this specification of sustainability make this use more legitimate. This consistency of use was observed in over 60% of the references to sustainability.⁶ Even though connecting solar cells and sustainability requires less explanatory work, this does not mean that the concept of sustainability itself becomes clearer because of this:

The only problem is sustainability is such an all-purpose phrase. So you have to specify: About what aspect of that broad term sustainability are you talking and what relation does it have with the specific work you're going to do on Monday morning? (Principal investigator, interview data, 2013)

Bos, Peine, and van Lente (2013) found that the fixed funnel connecting solar energy and sustainability has become a ‘black box’ in the solar panel case. This concept by Latour (1987) is described as a scientific concept or method that has been accepted by both the scientific community and society to such a degree that it is no longer open for debate. So even though the actors in the solar case do not have a precise definition of sustainability, they can claim to continue to work on sustainability when working on solar panels.

In the sensor group, the interviews show that the link with sustainability is not very often found in the projects. Bos, Peine, and van Lente (2013) consequently call this a less fixed funnel. The connections that are made need explanatory work since the connections are not well established. The connections to sustainability are very diverse: even members from the same project can come up with different connections to sustainability:

I don't really see the link with sustainability in our projects. (Principal investigator, interview data, 2013)

Data collection in space is really about gathering data ( … ) And from those patterns you could extract threats to the environment ( … ) So it's a bit far off, but you could use it for environmental monitoring ( … ) It's the same principle. (Ph.D., interview data, 2013)

Many different subjects are connected to sustainability, while the most frequent connection is made to the use of the earth's resources and the depletion of them. Furthermore, the actors in the sensor case are much more questioning the concept of sustainability itself. Topics like ‘not sure what sustainability is’, ‘window dressing/buzzwords’ or ‘sustainability as vague’ are mentioned often:

It's one of these vague statements. (Principal investigator, interview data, 2013)

You can label any [research] as sustainable, if you want to. And that probably will happen, if that is necessary. (Principal investigator + Ph.D., interview data, 2013)

The actors found pursuing sustainability meaningless since sustainability was considered very vague and broad and the connection between their own research and sustainability required much work.

5.2. Horizontal structuring

McGee's example of horizontal structuring is a clashing of ideographs; when confronted with other goals or ideologies, they have to be weighted relative to each other. A Dutch government report on nanotechnology starts with the following sentence:

Nanotechnologies are important for the Netherlands. They provide potential solutions to problems, for example, in relation to the environment, public health, food, more sustainable energy provision and safety. (Rijksoverheid 2006, 3)

Many societal goals are presented next to each other: they seem interchangeable. At the program office level, this same reasoning was followed. At the level of researchers, this interchangeable presentation of societal goals was used: sustainability was weighted against or compared with other ‘big goals’, especially with healthcare goals:

Yes, sustainability would be a bit harder, but if we look at health for instance, yes, there I'm right in the middle with my treatment instrument for prostate cancer. Could not be hotter. (Principal investigator, interview data, 2013)

That kid [PhD student] who is working on stretching devices ( … ) he is now plating colon cancer on that device. Colon cancer cells ( … ) So for me that does make your work more meaningful than working on just something ( … ) But is that then sustainability? That's also not sustainability. (Principal investigator, interview data, 2013)

The reasoning shows that interviewees while asked about whether their research had a link with sustainability, they referred to other societal goals, like health care, to receive the legitimacy they would have gotten from connecting to sustainability. Another example of this horizontal structuring of sustainability happened when the conversations moved to the collaboration of industry and universities and the economic value of the research – or its final applications. Valorization was more concretely important for getting a project funded than societal relevance:

So that was a project without industrial partner that also really wanted to participate. Because the [industrial] partner has to pay 25% of the project. If you didn't have that, then the project was off the table. Even if it would have been a really nice project. (Principal investigator, interview data, 2013)

However, other ideographs are not the only thing against which sustainability is weighted. Besides horizontal structuring as the relative weight of ideographs to each other, ideographs are also relative to other interests and needs that do not necessarily qualify as ideographs. Here we will discuss some of this horizontal structuring. Sustainability has to be weighted against other goals like receiving funding for conducting research.

Because what of course happened was, money was available and everybody was desperately trying to finance their own research. And with lots of effort that is fitted into a framework. And of course large societal goals are added. (Industry collaborator, interview data, 2013)

These quotes show how sustainability, which is mentioned as just one of the societal goals, is put in the background against the practice of getting research funding. Sustainability is just one of the right words to use to play along with the rules of getting funding.

There are some differences between the two groups of researchers that can be related to the vertical structuring. Since in the sensor case relating to sustainability is more difficult, sustainability is also more often seen as a buzzword:

Because it is a buzzword to get subsidies. So you use the words that get you what you need. Well, before you see anything from nanoscience that is societally relevant ( … ) You may be very pleased if you can find anything in 15 years. I mean there are more decent words for this, but this is what we call the bullshit bingo, right? (Industry collaborator, interview data, 2013)

It is seen as nonsensical to ask scientists researching something as fundamental as nanoscience to have applications and even more to relate these to large societal goals. The ‘bullshit bingo’ is a very cynical view about the claims about societal relevance that the scientists are making.

When, however, a fixed funnel connecting to sustainability exists, a very different view of using sustainability for legitimacy exists:

I remember that the project proposal had to pass the not-so-hard-at-all test of societal relevance. But maybe that was the specific project, because it was about solar cells. So where can it possibly go wrong? (Industry collaborator, interview data, 2013)

The interviewee describes how they also had to claim what the societal relevance of their research was. He did not struggle with this test at all: since sustainability is firmly connected to solar panels, he could make the claim of working for sustainability without much effort.

5.3. Discussion

The vertical structuring of sustainability refers to water, energy and environment as important themes at both the policy and the program management levels. The vertical structuring of sustainability is different among the two groups of researchers. The solar panel researchers made use of a fixed funnel to make an ‘obvious’ and easy connection to sustainability. The sensor researchers made much more diverse references to sustainability, which also took more explanatory work.

Sustainability was horizontally structured against valorization or against other societal goals such as health care. Furthermore, it was sometimes used strategically, for example, to receive funding. Some horizontal structuring related strongly to the vertical structuring: in the solar panel group, the societal relevance was seen as ‘easy’ to prove, since they have such a strong connection with sustainability. In the sensor group, sustainability was seen much more as a buzzword and a form of window dressing to receive funding (Table 1).

Table 1. Summary of vertical and horizontal structuring and broader positioning for sustainability.

	Vertical structuring	Horizontal structuring	Broader positioning
Policy level	Energy, water, environment	No clashes, but structuring alongside other societal goals	Sustainability is one of many different societal goals
Management	Energy, water, environment	No clashes, but structuring alongside other societal goals	Sustainability is one of many different societal goals
Research project	In solar projects a fixed funnel of articulation is present, which is consequently referred to. In sensor projects more diverse referrals	Structuring versus valorization and health care, and it is considered a strategic move	Stronger funnel in vertical structuring makes societal relevance ‘easy’ to prove. Weaker funnel makes sustainability seen as window dressing/buzzword

6. Responsible innovation

Internationally, the idea of ‘responsible development’ or ‘responsible innovation’ is a recurring theme in discussions about nanotechnology research programs. In the Netherlands, the notion of responsible development has flavored the tone in the policy documents of the Dutch government, setting conditions to the national research agenda for nanotechnology. Later on, compliance with the ‘EU-CoC’ became required for all publicly funded research in nanotechnology (EC 2008). Both sources of responsibility discourse have been impacting the way in which NanoNextNL is organized and how the idea of responsible innovation is understood. In this section, we will discuss how vertical and horizontal structuring in ideological content appears in the documents and interviews we studied.

6.1. Vertical structuring

The articulation of responsible innovation in relation to nanotechnology in the Netherlands starts with the crafting of the policy of the Dutch government in 2006. At that time responsible development had been taken up as one of the goals of the US National Nanotechnology Initiative and the European Commission had published its Nanotechnology Action Plan with the title ‘safe, integrated and responsible’ (2005). Both the US and EU discourse on responsible development strongly focused on safety issues, although not exclusively. In the Netherlands, the uncertainties about the safety of nanomaterials had also triggered political debate about the responsibilities of research institutes and companies and of the government (van Est et al. 2012). At the same time the government wanted to allocate substantial public funding to nanotechnology because of its strategic interest in the national R&D landscape. Both dimensions are reflected in the white paper on nanotechnology:

The challenge is to capitalize on opportunities whilst at the same time dealing with the risks in a responsible manner. (Rijksoverheid 2006, 13)

The use of ‘responsible’ in the Dutch policy documents only loosely links up with the international discourse on responsible development of nanotechnology. In the white paper, the ‘responsible manner’ is specified as taking appropriate precautionary measures, in which the government itself has the responsibility to ensure that such measures are developed and the required safety research is taken up in the research agenda for nanotechnology. In the follow-up action plan, this is presented as striking the balance between basic and applied research and research enabling the responsible handling of nanomaterials (Rijksoverheid 2008).

In the Strategic Research Agenda, which has structured the core of the NNNL program, the focus on safety is maintained and even presented as conducive to the success of the whole program:

In addition to comprehensive basic research, it is important to conduct responsible nanotechnological research with a common denominator. Just like with any new technology, it is important to keep sight of the potential risks associated with nanotechnology. It is the only way to guarantee the safe development, production and application of the products. (NNI 2008, 29)

Interestingly, in the same document, the EU-CoC is mentioned only in relation to safety, while contributing to societal challenges, such as that emphasized by the EU-CoC, is assumed to take place anyway. However, in 2010, when the funding for NNNL had been granted and the actual organization of NNNL started, a series of public dialog activities were held in the Netherlands. In this context, the chairman of NNNL emphasized the individual responsibilities of the researchers to consider the societal impact of their research:

We have said from the beginning that consideration of the consequences should be an integral part of all the work on nanotechnology. So all 300 PhD students will consider those questions – whether they are in chip technology, smart materials or photonics. Outsourcing to a couple of specialists would be nonsensical. (Blank 2011)

Although the notion of ‘responsible’ is not explicitly mentioned, it is stated in the same interview that the need to consider consequences is part of the role researchers have. As will become apparent from discussing the horizontal structuring of responsible innovation below, it is this idea of individual responsibility that, next to the projects on risk analysis and technology assessment (RATA), is translated into action in relation to the EU-CoC.

Awareness of the requirement to comply with the EU-CoC is the highest at the level of program management by the executive office of NNNL. At this level program officers struggle with the wide scope of the EU-CoC (allowing for many options in vertical structuring) as well as the expected self-evident nature of its principles. Instead of setting up a scheme for strict compliance with the EU-CoC, the realization of responsible research is thought to be ensured by interaction (between the RATA theme and the other themes) and reflection (by courses for Ph.D.s and principal investigators and obligatory consideration of risks in the final Ph.D. theses).

The program office of NNNL has been putting effort into organizing this interaction and reflection. However, most of our interviewees had not heard of these activities, nor of the EU-CoC, or the notion of responsible innovation. When inquiring how the interviewees would understand responsible innovation, ensuring safety is mentioned the most (14), followed by considering consequences (7) and contributing to sustainability (5).⁷ These responses can be better understood when looking at horizontal structuring.

6.2. Horizontal structuring

While at the policy level the dominant vertical structuring of responsible innovation as ‘dealing with risks’ can be presented rather unproblematically next to other commitments, this becomes more complicated at the management and research levels, where the articulation of responsible innovation is linked to individual responsibilities. In relation to the implementation of the requirement to comply with the EU-CoC, the program officers voice the expectation that most of the researchers will already comply with the code as following the principles of the code is already part of the research practice:

You don't want to prescribe things people already do ( … ) 95% of the researchers already comply with the code of conduct. ( … ) It is the same as with the law. One obeys the law, although one doesn't know what is in the law books. (Program office, interview data, 2012)

It therefore has been decided to implement the EU-CoC by stimulating interaction with RATA researchers and reflection in dedicated courses. Although most of the interviewees in the research groups did not know about this, similar attitudes are voiced. However, the responses from the research groups often get flavored with tones of suspicion and skepticism:

You know, there are people who think about Responsible Innovation, but I think it just is common sense. ( … ) [researchers] are all reasonable people, most of whom are socially engaged. (Principal investigator, interview data, 2013)

All those meetings about that kind of topic, I do get the invitations and then I think it is not relevant now, so I don't have to attend. (Industry collaborator, interview data, 2013)

A: Responsible innovation [is] going to be something like ‘to the best of my knowledge’ anyway.

B: Yes, it's always limited.

A: Otherwise nobody's going to do it.

(Conversation between two Ph.D.s, interview data, 2013)

Overall, the interviews confirm the ideographic character of responsible innovation. The notion of responsible innovation is clearly appealing, but the idea itself is not contested. Rather, the notion is sufficiently open to allow for flexible interpretation. When vertically structured in terms of safety, this issue is often deemed to be not relevant for the specific research project. When structured in terms of considering consequences, there is reluctance with regard to the consequences for individual responsibilities. This effect is the strongest when asked for knowledge about the EU-CoC, which potentially can have consequences for the participating researchers. For some interviewees, the (perceived) high level of bureaucracy and cheap promising in research proposals frequently fuel the skepticism.

6.3. Discussion

Responsible innovation is a fairly new term, often not known by the interviewees. This is interesting, since articulations of responsible innovation are not limited to STI policy, but are increasingly referred to in the context of national and European research programs. Some interviewees did indeed link the notion to established activities, such as the research program of the Dutch research council NWO or the Dutch corporate social responsibility label ‘Maatschappelijke Verantwoord Innoveren’. However, in articulating in relation to the research in NNNL, safety runs through all levels as the dominant way in which responsible innovation is vertically structured. This could be explained by the political and societal discussions about nanotechnology as well as by widely spread understandings of what individual researchers are responsible for. The ideological character of the notion of responsible innovation is clearest at the research level, where it seems to be ‘responsible’, which triggers the responses. Many interviewees did not know the term, but felt challenged to give their account. At this level, horizontal structuring occurs in relation to the positions, or responsibilities, of the actors, rather than in differences between normative orientations. Responsible innovation is what we do in a frequent response, followed by statements of not being relevant to the specific research project or the expectation that this will be the responsibility of someone else. Overall, however, the interviewees share the ideal voiced in the notion of responsible innovation (Table 2).

Table 2. Summary of vertical and horizontal structuring and broader positioning for responsible innovation.

	Vertical structuring	Horizontal structuring	Broader positioning
Policy level	Safety; by doing risk research	No clashes, added to list of commitments	Legitimating public investment in nanotechnology in context of safety concerns
Management	Safety, anticipating societal embedding; by stimulating interaction (of RATA in NNNL) and reflection/education (by courses)	Doability: extra obligations incremental since existing practice supposed to be responsible already (common sense)	Compliance with EU-CoC required
			Public dialog running
			TA next to RA in NNNL (‘societal embedding’)
Research project	Safety, considering consequences and sustainability	Doability: has to fit in scope of individual responsibilities	Very low awareness of the notion of responsible innovation or specific initiatives in NNNL
			Safety widely accepted as responsibility (also most prominent issue in discussions about nanotechnology), but reluctance to ‘outsider’ requirements perceived as constraints

7. Valorization

The policy documents that were written for the NNNL program reflect the importance of valorization. This program was meant not just to be a research program, but an innovation program. In this part we discuss which vertical and horizontal structuring is present in valorization.

7.1. Vertical structuring

In policy documents, valorization was often stressed:

The research agenda currently in front of you is asking for research initiatives in the terrain of nanotechnology as well as for attention to be paid to training, valorization, transfer of knowledge and a capacity for innovation from knowledge institutes, the business world, social organizations as well as the authorities. (NNI 2008, 1)

Of all the programs, NanoNed was the most conspicuous one ( … ) It created real added value in terms of knowledge and valorization. (NNI 2008, 4)

The predecessor of the NNNL program, NanoNed, is mentioned as an example of good valorization and as something that creates ‘real added value’, i.e. something measurable. The vertical structuring of valorization at the policy level is made into organizational requirements, such as a certain amount of patents to be filed and the requirement to work together with industry, to get a project funded in the NNNL. These requirements were measured and controlled by the program management level.

The researchers expressed different attitudes toward valorization of their research. Some felt that having an industry collaborator focused the research that they were doing and gave extra meaning to it:

That's the fun part. You can do lab experiments, but we only work on stuff that we know we can scale up to square kilometers. (Ph.D. student, interview data, 2013)

This researcher expresses that ‘the fun part’ is working on something that you know can also be scaled up. The goal of the research is steered by its valorization. Some researchers, and especially industry collaborators, take this line of thinking further: if research is steered by valorization, then the valorization potential can come to serve as a precondition for being an interesting research subject. The funding of a research topic where there is little industry to work together with is made questionable. Researchers are also aware of this:

So in your research you have to be careful about whether the technology is profitable. In most cases it is profitable, but if things have a temporary setback, companies start falling over ( … ) The company that produced those new kinds of solar panels was closed down because it was not seen as profitable ( … ) Luckily, someone bought the whole thing, so it will remain in Dutch hands, which is also good for our research. (Ph.D., interview data, 2013)

Because of the importance that valorization plays in current research funding, researchers are aware that the position of the interested industry in their country is very important to them. Seeing this trend, many universities and research institutes are using valorization in a strategic way or are actively adopting their funding strategies to fit the valorization mindset:

A shift in subsidies will happen ( … ) with the purpose of stimulating R&D investments in industry ( … ) More than before we will give attention to the small and medium enterprise (SME). (ECN 2011, 6)

7.2. Horizontal structuring

As seen in vertical structuring, valorization is often positioned next to other societal goals in policy. Valorization was, however, the only ‘big word’ that was made into an organizational and administrative requirement at the policy and program management levels. At the research level, valorization was horizontally structured against other ideographs, such as sustainability. For solar panels, sustainability only made sense if solar energy became affordable and competitive with regular electricity. Sustainability and valorization were horizontally structured next to each other: no sustainability without valorization seemed possible:

In solar cells it is all about two things: making them more efficient or less expensive. (Ph.D., interview data, 2013)

Also valorization was seen as something good to pursue in general and was thus also often referred to when asked about the societal relevance of the research. The other societal goals, such as health care and sustainability, are replaced with valorization: it is good that research is somehow commercialized:

I also think it is wise for academia. If you just sit in your cave for a year and there are no other parties that you talk to [outside your own field] then you start doing crazy things. I think that's true for both academia and industry. You need each other, you're each other's customer. (Industry collaborator, interview data, 2013)

This reasoning is, however, also disputed. Some researchers expressed negative associations with the concept of valorization, mostly as it would oppose science for the sake of curiosity, of which it could not possibly be clear beforehand what the purpose might be:

 … now the demand is that industry has to contribute 25% hard cash to the projects. That killed all innovation, all hard innovation. Because it all has to be related directly to the market, that's soft innovation. (Principal investigator, interview data, 2013)

Valorization would kill real innovation, because more long-term or more exciting research directions would not get funded anymore, since companies were only willing to invest in short-term research, which could easily be marketed.

Because of this demand to work together with industry and because industry had to contribute funding to the project and thus wanted to have some say over the direction of the project, the project definition phase in the NNNL program was a difficult and lengthy one for most projects. In the first phases of the collaboration in particular, the collaboration between industry and universities was limited:

So far, we haven't been very active. Of course we've been at the meeting. But yeah, the research is still so fundamental in this stage … (Industry interviewee, interview data, 2013)

Yeah, exactly, it's [collaboration with industry] less than we originally hoped for. We hoped for more intensive collaboration. But yeah, this whole setting up of the NanoNextNL program: That took so much time with lots of iterations. (Principal investigator, interview data, 2013)

After this usually messy starting phase, the collaboration mostly works quite well:

Generally working with industry is good ( … ) it gives you focus. Because essentially they are the ones that have to work with it. (Ph.D. student, interview data, 2013)

Even though this works quite well, most interviewees do stress that when valorization is specified as an industry/university collaboration, you have to constantly be aware that both have different priorities and possibly also have different expectations of the outcomes of the research project:

You have to know that the goals are different. So a scientist shouldn't think that industry will invest time in a paper. And industry shouldn't think that the university will solve the total problem for them. But if you take that into account, you can help each other. (Industry collaborator, interview data, 2013)

The industry was not the only one that struggled with the collaborations. The university researchers were sometimes also very much aware that not that much valorization would take place with the research that they were doing even though this is what the whole NNNL program was intended for:

Well, yeah, the chance that my own research will be very widely applicable is not very large … (Ph.D. student, interview data, 2013)

7.3. Discussion

Valorization was vertically structured at the policy and management levels in having an organizational requirement to work together with industry on all projects within NNNL. This influential structuring was present throughout all the levels.

At the research level, three ways of vertical structuring are seen. First, research that had an explicit valorization goal was perceived as being very useful and also satisfying for the researchers themselves because it would not be research for the sake of research, but it ‘would actually be used’. Second, valorization potential can even become a precondition for an interesting research subject. Finally, because valorization is seen as useful and good for research and is consequently stressed by policy, it becomes a strategic move to pursue valorization. Universities, research institutes, individual researchers and also companies are rethinking their strategies of how to work effectively in industry/university collaborations and are keen to show off their valorization successes.

Valorization is horizontally structured against other societal goals such as sustainability. For most researchers, working together with industry on something that will be applicable as a product is making the research more useful. However, some researchers also actively protest against the filling-in of valorization as having to work together with industry to get funding. They are not necessarily against valorization or working together with industry, but since valorization is becoming such a powerful word they are scared that all research will in the end be funded like this.

Even though valorization was something that had to be ‘used’ to receive funding and was sometimes a struggle to fill it in, it was perceived less as window dressing as sustainability was sometimes seen. The vertical structuring of what valorization is was already articulated at the policy and management levels. Having to find and work together with a partner was a much more tangible demand than writing about societal impact in a research proposal for the researchers. The perception of window dressing is felt when talking in one direction and acting in another. This was not possible for these industry/university collaborations in relation to valorization. This meant the researchers did not have to perform work themselves to specify and vertically structure valorization, but that they could use the vertical structuring that had already been articulated for them (Table 3).

Table 3. Summary of vertical and horizontal structuring and broader positioning for valorization.

	Vertical structuring	Horizontal structuring	Broader positioning
Policy level	Economic utilization, profits, patents. Requirement to work together with companies on all projects	Often compared to other societal goals. Valorization usually comes before societal goals	Economic utilization of research is stressed because of profitability
Management	Keeping track of requirements: patent counts + industry/university collaboration	Working together with company was requirement, so weighted heavier than other ideographs	Accommodating industry/university collaboration
Research project	(1) Useful, purposeful for research; (2) precondition for interesting research and (3) strategic goal	Working together with company was requirement, so weighted heavier than other ideographs	Not perceived as window dressing due to organizational requirement

8. Conclusion and discussion

How are research programs oriented toward encompassing normative goals? Where and how do ‘big words’ enter the various layers of research programs? How is decision-making affected, at the level of program management and at the level of researchers? In this paper, we have conceptualized encompassing normative goals (‘big words’) as ideographs, which have to be articulated in order to become forceful. We have traced the articulations of ‘sustainability’, ‘responsible innovation’ and ‘valorization’ in a Dutch research program on nanotechnology by systematically following the content and the linkages of the big words at the level of policy-making, program management and research projects. Now we are in a position to draw empirical, conceptual and practical conclusions.

First, we have found that sustainability, responsible innovation and valorization do indeed function as ideographs. They have a positive and thus forceful normative connotation: it is difficult to contest the desirability of sustainability, responsible innovation and valorization. The introduction of an ideograph into the conversation or discourse brings along a pressure to respond. For example, in the case of responsible innovation, where interviewees were often not familiar with the term, they nevertheless felt they had to come up with some account. Our data, though, suggest that ideographs are not static entities, but are malleable and can emerge. Valorization, for instance, is contested as a value; some researchers consider valorization activities as limiting ‘real exiting science’ to research that is relevant from a market perspective. The possibility that the set of ideographs can change over time adds a new dimension to the original ideas of McGee.

According to McGee, ideographs do their rhetorical work in vertical and horizontal structuring. In our research, we found clear examples of both. In vertical structuring the ideograph is specified, which has more legitimizing strength when the same reference has been made more often. In the sustainability case, for instance, solar panel researchers have a long tradition of linking their research to sustainability. Calling a solar panel sustainable is readily accepted both inside and outside the academic world and does not require further underpinning. For ‘responsible innovation’ the strongest vertical structuring refers to safety; the history of the concept of responsible innovation is very intertwined with safety issues. Now that it has often been specified in this way, it is difficult to specify responsible innovation in other directions and to introduce it as a broader notion. In the valorization case, the most prominent vertical structuring is in terms of industry/university collaboration. In our case, it has been formalized into an entry requirement for all of the projects. Logically, this entails this vertical structuring being used consistently within the whole NNNL.

Horizontal structuring occurs when ideographs are compared or substituted. We also found that different societal goals can be traded off. For example, when some actors were asked whether and how their research related to sustainability, they answered that their research might not be linked to sustainability but it was linked to health care. By replacing one societal goal with another, their research can still be considered societally relevant and thus ‘good’.

Also valorization and sustainability were compared and confronted quite often. As there was an organizational requirement to work together with a company, this was given more weight than trying to direct research to sustainability. In the case of making solar panels, the trade-off also strongly appeared: whether to direct effort to make a solar panel more sustainable (i.e. more efficient) or to direct it to valorization (make it as cheap as possible). Usually valorization was favored in this confrontation and was presented as a precondition for sustainability: without selling any solar panels and thus making them cheaper first, no sustainability would be reached at all.

While our analysis of the articulation of ‘big words’ follows the vertical and horizontal structuring of ideographs, we have also paid attention to the sociological context in which the rhetorical structuring takes place, so as to understand what this structuring may do in research practices. This has been especially useful for understanding and extending the horizontal structuring that occurred in our empirical findings. First, McGee's horizontal structuring mainly describes the ‘clashing’ of two ideographs in one situation, i.e. having to favor one over the other. However, what we saw with the societal goals such as sustainability, responsible innovation and valorization is that a switch between them is easily made. For most researchers, the ‘switchability’ between these goals has become a way of creating legitimacy in more than one direction.

Another extension from the classic notion of the ideograph is that ideographs do not just clash with other ideographs. We found that clashes with nonideographic notions are much more common and need to be taken into account more on a day-to-day basis. All three – sustainability, responsible innovation and valorization – constantly need to be weighted against other aspects of doing research. The researchers think it good to pursue, for example, responsible innovation, but only when it is also doable within a certain time, or when it is affordable. These kinds of considerations are constantly being made and determine how the articulation of the ideographs takes place in practice.

We therefore conclude that when ‘big words’ are articulated at the various levels of research management, they may steer, or rather guide, scientific research into a particular direction, but not unilaterally. Big words are employed and mobilized both by program management (top-down) and by researchers themselves (bottom-up) and their mutual reference enables and justifies some specific research directions, while limiting others. We demonstrated how this steering works out in research practices with these words that are open and flexible, while exerting a force because of a normative connotation. We also argued that when ‘big words’ are used in an organizational and administrative setting, it changes their effects. Valorization, for instance, has been translated into the organizational and administrative requirement to have an industry and university collaboration in all projects. Big words, therefore, are not just rhetorical devices, but may solidify into institutional conditions and steer research silently.

Acknowledgement

This work is supported by NanoNextNL, a micro- and nanotechnology consortium of the Government of the Netherlands and 130 partners.

Notes on contributors

Colette Bos is a Ph.D. candidate at the Innovation Sciences group of Utrecht University. Her project is part of the NanoNextNL program. Her main research focus is how large societal goals (such as sustainability or the aging society) are articulated and how the different articulations are used by different actors to specify, justify and legitimate different directions of research within nanotechnologies.

Bart Walhout is a Ph.D. candidate at the Science, Technology and Policy Studies department of the University of Twente. He studies responsible innovation initiatives in the field of nanotechnology and is involved in the FP7 project Res-AGorA, which develops a governance framework for responsible research and innovation. Previously he has worked for the Rathenau Institute, a parliamentary technology assessment organization.

Alexander Peine is Assistant Professor of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies at Utrecht University. Previously he worked at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) and Berlin University of Technology. Alexander holds a Ph.D. in sociology and business economics from Berlin University of Technology. His research focuses on the shifting roles of consumers in innovation processes of complex technical systems and on new technologies that serve the needs of older persons (gerontechnology).

Harro van Lente is Socrates Professor of Philosophy of Sustainable Development at ICIS, Maastricht University, and Associate Professor of Innovation Studies at Utrecht University. He has published widely on the sociology of expectations, technology dynamics, innovation policy and philosophy of technology. His research concerns how emerging technologies produce novelty and needs. Currently, he is Program Director of Technology Assessment of the NanoNextNL program.

Notes

1. See http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-sections and Lund Declaration (2009).

2. Even stronger, the very idea of policy intervention in favor of ‘responsible’ innovation presupposes that innovation is in danger of being ‘irresponsible’ without such interventions – which of course is a questionable assumption.

3. Documents analyzed are NNI (2008), Rijksoverheid (2008), Rijksoverheid (2006) and Topteam HTSM (2011).

4. Conferences attended: MicroNanoConference 2011, 2012, 2013, NanoCode conference 2011 and Intelligent Sensor Networks Conference 2012.

5. The topic of articulations of sustainability in nanotechnology was investigated earlier by the authors (Bos, Peine and van Lente) and will be recalled here more briefly, since the aim of this paper is to reflect on three different ideographs.

6. Sustainability was mentioned 55 times in all the interviews. It was connected to solar energy 35 times.

7. Responsible innovation was in total mentioned 36 times in all the interviews.