Network Infrastructures
Technology meets Institutions

This book explores the interdependencies between technologies and institutions in network infrastructures.

Rolf Kunneke (Author), Claude Ménard (Author), John Groenewegen (Author)

9781108832694, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 December 2021

250 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.552 kg

'This book is a critical element to understand the functioning and performance of network infrastructures. By exploring ways in which institutions and technology interact in shaping network infrastructures performance, it opens a new perspective to our understanding of a highly complex topic. It is a must read for all interested in the key role that networks have in modern society.' Pablo T. Spiller, University of California, Berkeley

Infrastructures are complex networks dominated by tight interdependencies between technologies and institutions. These networks supply services crucial to modern societies, services that can be provided only if several critical functions are fulfilled. This book proposes a theoretical framework with a set of concepts to analyse rigorously how these critical functions require coordination within the technological dimension as well as within the institutional dimension. It also shows how fundamental the alignment between these two dimensions is. It argues that this alignment operates along different layers characterized successively by the structure, governance and transactions that connect technologies and institutions. These issues of coordination and alignment, at the core of the book, are substantiated through in-depth case studies of networks from the energy, water and wastewater, and transportation sectors.

Introduction. Lifting the veil
Part I. Conceptual Framework: 1. Network infrastructures – from coordination to alignment
2. Institutional embeddedness – a conceptual challenge
3. Technology in three dimensions – economics meets system engineering
4. Bringing together two worlds apart
Part II. Empirical Explorations: 5. Structures – unravelling the energy transition
6. Governance – a tale of a city's water and wastewater network
7. Transactions – the many challenges self-driving vehicles face
8. Taking stock, looking ahead.

Subject Areas: Technology, engineering, agriculture [T], Business studies: general [KJB], Economics of industrial organisation [KCD], Economics [KC]