Innovation and institutional change: the transition to a sustainable ...

64 Chapter 3
Linkages involve connections between different components of the system.
This may involve relationships between actors such as buyers and suppliers,
government and business; between actors and technologies with certain
actors developing or using specific technologies; and between technologies,
as products contain a multitude of technologies that work together and may
involve several knowledge areas. Practices contain linkages between actors,
technologies and networks. Alignment is a core mechanism in the
development and stabilisation of systems. It refers to the way actions of
actors become tuned to each other through the emergence of an established
design, through the emergence of a division of labour for various actors in
the system, through the emergence of standards, through shared problem
definitions and shared visions regarding the ways of improvement for, and
the future direction of, the technological system. Understanding and
identifying the processes through which alignment takes place, such as
interaction processes in different networks and fora that are bound by the
knowledge and principles that are generally accepted within them, is a key
task necessary to understand the stability of systems and opportunities to
corrode this stability. In this corrosion of stability and in the shaping of
alternative paths confrontation is an important mechanism. Confronting
actors with other problem definitions, problem approaches and solutions can
increase their receptiveness to think beyond the established ways of doing
things.
Institutions form the ‘rules of the game’ in the organisation of systems of
production and consumption. They include formal rules such as market rules
on profits, property rights, patents, liability, planning, and investment
decisions, and informal rules such as those regarding principles of trust,
negotiation, and co-operation. Institutions confirm ways of doing things, and
enable them to be done in a routine manner, as they facilitate minimisation
of transaction costs (search for information, contractual aspects, etc.). Our
analysis of institutions starts from the recognition that a layered pattern of
institutions exists. This ranges from fundamental ground rules regarding the
organisation and co-ordination of societal processes, to more specific rules
that can be located in the different dimensions of the system, to even more
detailed rules concerning specific linkages in systems. Apart from being
multi-level, the relevant institutions in systems are also multi-dimensional.
The key to understanding systems and systems change is to gain insight in
the nature of the institutions that align development between those levels and
dimensions.
Structure involves the way the different elements are configured and ordered
into the system, and especially the way sets of institutional arrangements
have become structural in the interaction of the sociotechnical system with
wider fields of knowledge, policy, economy, and society. Outcomes of these