Alan Irwin

Technological trajectories and R&D for environmental innovation in UK firms

Abstract This article reports results of a 1993 questionnaire survey of how UK companies have been innovating technologically in response to environmental pressures. The survey sought to identify factors stimulating UK firms to innovate more environmentally friendly products and processes, and to investigate the changes in R&D activity they have undertaken to facilitate such innovation. In devising the questionnaire and interpreting the results, we have been strongly influenced by the theoretical frameworks developed over the past 15 years which describe technological developments in terms of ‘selection environments’ and ‘technological trajectories’. Useful though such frameworks are, we conclude that they need to be supplemented by concepts derived from the sociology of technology and from studies of corporate strategies.

Regulatory science—Towards a sociological framework☆

Abstract The close relationship between scientific expertise and regulatory policy in certain controversial and public areas has prompted commentators to suggest the concept of ‘regulatory science’. However, definition is generally constrained either to the concerns of regulatory science or to its context. This paper proposes an approach to regulatory science which is both empirically-based and allows a more theoretical treatment of the new conditions of scientific and regulatory activity. A particular case-study of the British agrochemicals sector is presented in terms of a five-way analytical framework for regulatory science. The paper concludes by considering the wider relevance of regulatory science for future sociological and policy research.

Risk communication, public participation and the Seveso II directive

Abstract Risk communication and public participation are considered in the context of the forthcoming requirements of the `Seveso II Directive. The discussion draws substantially on the findings of a research project which has investigated public perceptions of the risks from major accident hazards in seven communities in the UK. Implications for the Directives requirements on emergency information provision, public access to safety reports and consultation on emergency plans are considered. Our conclusions stress the need for risk communication to be seen as a long term and ongoing process, involving active listening to public reasoning about risk and a sensitivity to the context in which communication is taking place. In meeting both needs and rights to information and encouraging and enabling public participation, we conclude that the Directive should contribute in some degree to an improved environment for dialogue and the building of trust.

Regulatory Science, Europeanization, and the Control of Agrochemicals

This article addresses issues of regulatory convergence and Europeanization as they have developed within the agrochemicals sector. Taking the United Kingdom as a case study, the article considers the continuing importance of local and national factors within systems that are ostensibly international and standardized. In particular, the article shows how the embedded social relations of regulatory science in the United Kingdom, including institutional practices, judgments of expertise, and established relationships of trust, result in a “nation centeredness” and divergence of regulatory cultures despite the putative development of a harmonized European framework. It is argued that, as a consequence, the claimed universalism of scientific culture in this area is in tension with the local conditions of its practice and enactment.

Regulatory Science and the European Control of Agrochemicals

Ever since Silent Spring (Carson 1962), the control of agrochemicals has been of central interest to the environmental movement and to consumers’ organisations. Many elements within the environmental movement have pressed for substantial agricultural and regulatory reform. Meanwhile, industry and policy-makers have pursued the international harmonisation of regulatory controls — largely, of course, for economic reasons but also as part of a wider concern with the ecological and health effects of pesticides. Overall, there have been substantial changes in international regulatory regimes and in the toxicological testing required for agrochemicals.

Reconstructing the Local and the Global: Europeanisation, Regulation and Changing Knowledge Relations

The management of regulatory affairs by pesticide companies is now very different to that of thirty years ago. Talk to a manager of a pesticide company’s ‘regulatory affairs’ department today and you will learn that, until at least the 1970s, there was probably no such department. In the UK until the mid-1980s, there were no statutory regulations for pesticide approval. Instead, a voluntary scheme operated on the principle that only pesticides approved by government experts would be supplied. Meanwhile, obtaining approval was given a low priority by companies, typically ‘tacked-on’ at the end of the innovation process and overseen by ex-field trials officers towards the end of their careers. The scheme was sufficiently informal and the network of professional contacts so small that, in the words of one manager, it was possible to ‘take out the MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture) representative for a couple of beers and everything would be all right’