Australian biotechnology companies and networks: methodological issues in the replication of a major US study

This paper arises from a replication of a major US study on the ‘network logic’ of biotechnology companies. Walter Powell, the leading sociological authority in this field, has argued that such companies are exemplars of new forms of economic and organizational behaviour. He has also observed that ‘this new logic of organising’ might well ‘diffuse globally’, but alternatively national-level institutions might refract ‘common competitive pressures’ and produce ‘divergent responses’ (Powell 2001: 66): hence replication in the Australian context. Yet replication presents many challenges. There is no comparable publicly-available database of Australian biotechnology companies with which to work. There are also a variety of problems in applying the categories of the original study to Australian biotechnology companies and their partner organisations. Some of these problems have implications for the original study. Others arise in the Australian context, on account of differences in the configuration of the Australian industry. On this account, there is a risk that replication might actually obscure the differences that it is designed to address. By implication, replication must involve close attention to the raw data, and adjustment of categories to take into account differences across countries.