Standards, Modularity, and
Innovation:
the Case of Medical Practice
Richard
N. Langlois
Department of Economics
The University of Connecticut
U63 Storrs, CT 06269-1063 USA
(860) 486-3472 (phone)
(860) 486-4463 (fax)
Richard.Langlois@UConn.edu
and
Deborah A. Savage
Southern Connecticut State University
and Yale University
Paper presented at the Conference on Path Dependence
and Path Creation,
August 19-22, 1997, Copenhagen.
Published in Raghu Garud and Peter Karnĝe, eds.,
Path
Dependence and Path Creation.
Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001, pp. 149-168.
ABSTRACT
Most economic analyses of path creation and dependence are stories about how standards create network externalities - and thus potential "lock-in" - in technological systems like personal computers or high-definition television. This paper examines similar questions of path creation and dependence in the context of behavioral rather than technological standards. (Standards, we note, are at base a kind of social institution; and social institutions are recurrent patterns of behavior that help to coordinate human activity.) The papers focuses on the setting of standards for medical education and medical practice in the United States in the early twentieth century. Drawing on the economic theory of the professions articulated by Savage (1994), we argue that those standards proved "enabling" in that they created a decentralized network that was open to ideas from outside and was able to collaborate easily in the interdisciplinary fashion that proved crucial for the development of new devices and techniques.
See also Deborah A. Savage and Paul L. Robertson, "The Maintenance of Professional Authority: The Case of Physicians and Hospitals in the United States," in Paul L. Robertson, ed., Authority and Control in Modern Industry. London: Routledge, 1999, pp. 155-172.
