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CHAPTER 6
GREAT EXPECTATIONS:
DISCOURSE AND AFFECT DURING
FIELD EMERGENCE
Stine Grodal and Nina Granqvist
ABSTRACT
Studies show that discourses are important in legitimating emerging
fields. However, we still lack understanding of how potential participants’
interpretations of discourses shape their involvement in emerging fields
particularly when the field’s definition is ambiguous. Drawing on an in-
depth study of the emerging nanotechnology field we show that indivi-
duals’ affective responses to discourses play an important role in their
decisions to participate. We find that discourse, expectations, affective
responses, and participation in emerging fields are mutually constituted,
and develop a model that shows these interconnections. Theoretically,
our study expands understandings of discourse and field emergence by
incorporating affect.
Keywords: Discourse; affect; organizational fields; emergence;
institutional theory; nanotechnology
Emotions and the Organizational Fabric
Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 10, 139166
Copyright r2014 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1108/S1746-979120140000010014
139
INTRODUCTION
Discourse plays an important role in field emergence. Discourse is “a sys-
tem of texts that brings an object into being” (Hardy & Phillips, 1999,
p. 2), and an organizational field is a set of organizations “that partakes of
a common meaning system and whose participants interact more frequently
and fatefully with one another than with actors outside the field” (Scott,
1995, p. 56). Discourse shapes emerging fields, because new beliefs, atti-
tudes, and understandings about the field are articulated and disseminated
through texts that can travel over distance, and shape beliefs and attitudes
(Hardy, Lawrence, & Grant, 2005;Phillips, Lawrence, & Hardy, 2004;
Vaara, Tienari, & Laurila, 2006). Emerging fields are inherently ambiguous
in that they “support several different meanings at the same time” (Weick,
1995, p. 91). This ambiguity is pronounced because a shared understanding
of what products and services belong to the field does not yet exist. For
example, in organizational fields such as cloud computing, artificial intelli-
gence, and nanotechnology the lack of a prototypical physical product has
enabled the coexistence of multiple and often divergent interpretations.
Furthermore, in emerging fields few participants have first-hand experience
of the material developments and actual activities (Phillips et al., 2004).
When forming perceptions about an emerging field, most of the potential
participants, therefore, need to rely on discourse (Lawrence & Phillips,
2004).
Scholars have made great strides in understanding field emergence
from various perspectives, including agency (Etzion & Ferraro, 2009;
Maguire, Hardy, & Lawrence, 2004), identity dynamics (Navis & Glynn,
2011), novel practices (Lounsbury & Crumley, 2007), categorical evolu-
tion (Suarez, Grodal, & Gotsopoulos, 2013), and framing activities
(Lounsbury, Ventresca, & Hirsch, 2003;Rao, 1998). Recently, researchers
have begun to develop an understanding of the interplay between dis-
courses and field emergence, for example, by identifying who creates texts
(Maguire & Hardy, 2006); and by examining changes in macro-level dis-
courses (Lawrence & Phillips, 2004). From a discursive perspective, field
emergence is a recursive process between the authoring, interpretation,
and disseminations of texts (Phillips et al., 2004), whereby texts aid in
legitimating novel actions (Vaara & Monin, 2010;Vaara & Tienari,
2008). Yet, these studies have tended to examine the macro-level changes
in organizational fields without unpacking the process through which dis-
course shapes the participants’ actions.
140 STINE GRODAL AND NINA GRANQVIST
The literature on affect might aid us in understanding this relationship.
Indeed, affective responses shape potential participants’ interpretation of
texts and the extent to which they themselves subsequently disseminate dis-
course. One of the consequences of the recursive affective relationship
between authoring, interpretation, and dissemination of texts is the genera-
tion of fads and fashions (Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999). Fields stricken
by fashion cycles range from crazes such at tulip mania (Garber, 1989),
total quality management (Zbaracki, 1998), and the Californian gold
rush (Isenberg, 2001), to technology-driven fields such as e-commerce
(Kalakota & Robinson, 2000), biotechnology (Markel & Robin, 1985), arti-
ficial intelligence (Crevier, 1994), and nanotechnology (Granqvist, Grodal,
& Woolley, 2013). Yet, the existing literature has given short shrift to affec-
tive aspects of discourse. Indeed, scholars have advocated that we need to
pay closer attention to the role affect plays in macro-organizational phe-
nomena like field emergence (Voronov & Vince, 2012). In this study we set
out to explore how discourses influence field participation, and how this
relationship might be shaped by participants’ affective responses to dis-
course about the field.
Drawing on an in-depth study of the nanotechnology field we develop a
model of the relationship between discourse, expectations, affect, and field
participation. Our findings show that an important element of discourse is
that it shapes the expectations that participants have about the future of a
field, which evokes affective responses, and influences their participation
(and nonparticipation) within the field. Our chapter contributes by inte-
grating affect into institutional theory and extends our understandings of
the micro-foundations of field emergence.
DISCOURSE AND AFFECT IN EMERGING
ORGANIZATIONAL FIELDS
Discourse in Emerging Fields
The literature has shown that discourses (Hardy et al., 2005;Lawrence &
Phillips, 2004;Phillips et al., 2004) and rhetoric (Green, 2004;Suddaby &
Greenwood, 2005) influence the actions of participants in emerging fields.
Phillips et al. (2004) theorize that the relationship between action and dis-
course begins with actors creating new understandings and disseminating
141Great Expectations: Discourse and Affect during Field Emergence
them through discourse, which subsequently has the potential to influence
other prospective participants. The authors stress that discourses related to
the rewards and sanctions of participation are particularly prone to moti-
vate action.
While discourse is generally important for shaping understandings and
actions in several contexts, it plays an even more central role in emerging
fields. Emerging fields are characterized by “the lack of a stable, shared dis-
course and well-established structures of domination and co-operation”
(Maguire et al., 2004, p. 674). Such contexts are fraught with uncertainty
about the main products, technologies, designs (Hargadon & Douglas,
2001;Kaplan & Tripsas, 2008), core customers, most appropriate business
model, and the boundaries of the field (Granqvist et al., 2013;Santos &
Eisenhardt, 2009). Further, varying and diffuse expectations about future
development characterize emerging fields (Meyer & Rowan, 1977;
Zbaracki, 1998), and these expectations significantly shape potential parti-
cipants’ understandings. Despite high uncertainty, participants need to
make decisions about their degree of involvement in the field (Granqvist
et al., 2013). Discourses about emerging fields have the qualities that
Phillips et al. (2004) stress as important for inducing action (see also
Mantere & Vaara, 2008). These discourses often describe enticing novel
entities and phenomena about which potential participants lack concrete
knowledge. Furthermore, emerging fields challenge existing fields and
thereby may erode the foundations for current activities, leading potential
participants to draw on discourses in their efforts to make sense of the new
situation and their firm’s role in it (Lawrence & Phillips, 2004). By attempt-
ing to organize varying discourses into coherent sets of meaning, or frames
that reflect the particular characteristics and interests of their group, poten-
tial participants shape the trajectory of the emerging field (Kaplan, 2010;
Maguire et al., 2004;Vaara & Monin, 2010).
Empirical studies have established that discourses are an important ele-
ment of field emergence. For example, Maguire and Hardy (2006) exam-
ined the development of environmental regulation on persistent organic
pollutants. They show how a new discourse shaped the emergence of novel
regulatory institutions by providing both incentives and resources for peo-
ple to participate in the field. Similarly, Lawrence and Phillips (2004) found
that the changing discourse about whales enabled the emergence of an
organizational field around whale watching. Both studies show that the
appearance of favorable and, hence, supportive discourses facilitated field
emergence. Further, studying an industrial dispute at the Port of
Melbourne, Selsky, Spicer, and Teicher (2003) found that actors capitalize
142 STINE GRODAL AND NINA GRANQVIST
on discourse to make sense of the domain and stimulate coordinated action
within it. In turn, the literature has made great progress in demonstrating
that discourse forms foundations for emerging fields. However, we still lack
an understanding of the process through which discourse induces actors to
participate in the field.
Expectations and Affect in Emerging Fields
In contrast to established fields, where the rewards and sanctions of partici-
pation are more observable and well-rounded, one challenge in emerging
fields is that rewards are often related to their future potential, which is
inherently ambiguous. While the discourse literature has paid little atten-
tion to expectations, related literatures have shown how expectations might
play an important role in shaping participation. According to Brown and
Michael (2003), potential participants construct collective understandings
of how a particular field will develop in the future, including prospects of
its primary customer base, investment opportunities, future market size,
and impact on existing technologies. Positive expectations about an emer-
ging field’s future lead participants to invest time and resources, whereas
negative expectations lead potential participants to withdraw, thereby ham-
pering the field’s development (Aldrich & Fiol, 1994). Discourse in emer-
ging fields in turn gives rise to perceptions of the potential rewards and
risks of participation.
The challenge with discourses that portray the future (in contrast to the
ones that reflect the current situation) is that there are few, if any means to
validate their accuracy. Without existing benchmarks for evaluation, dis-
courses about the future may become self-perpetuating and give rise to
fads, hypes, and bubbles. Few studies link hypes and bubbles to collective
sentiments and participants’ affective responses to varying expectations
regarding the field (Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999). However, scholars
that have considered this issue have paid little or no attention to how parti-
cipants’ affective reactions to discourse within an emerging field might
influence their participation in it, or how these discourses may spread emo-
tive content in the first place. This is surprising given that research has
shown that emotions form a basis for action (Plutchik, 1980) and that the
affective responses people have to discourse shape their tendency to spread
and reproduce what they have heard (Berger & Milkman, 2012).
The fact that emotion is important to how organizations function is not
a novel revelation. Within social theory a large literature has accumulated
143Great Expectations: Discourse and Affect during Field Emergence
on the role that affect plays in shaping human behavior (Plutchik, 1980). In
organizational theory a large literature on emotions has shown how diver-
sity affects workers’ emotions (Ashkanasy, Ha
¨rtel, & Daus, 2002), how
emotions can enable organizational change (Quy, 1999), and how the emo-
tions that workers experience shape the work that they do (Elsbach & Barr,
1999;Hochschild, 1979). Furthermore, headway has been made in sociol-
ogy by developing a theory of collective emotions, promoting a view of
emotions as collectively constructed phenomena (Collins, 1981;Jasper,
1998). The role of affect in shaping action in organizational fields may be
tightly linked to participants’ responses to the discourses about the field, as
well as the affective content of the discourse. Indeed, social movement
scholars have suggested that affect plays a key role in facilitating mobi-
lization (Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta, 2001;Jasper, 1998). We know that
people’s affective responses to discourses shape their tendencies to
further disseminate these discourses (Heath, Bell, & Sternberg, 2000).
Recently, however, institutionalists have highlighted the void in our under-
standing of the link between different institutional arrangements and affect
(Voronov & Vince, 2012). Thus, in terms of inducing participation, affect
in general and the role of affective discourse in particular have been over-
looked in explanations of field emergence.
A central preoccupation in the literature has been to develop a typology
of emotional experiences. Various studies have identified the existence of
612 discrete emotions, ranging in their valence from fear and sadness to
love and happiness (Russell, 1980). The exact number and the boundaries
between these emotions have, however, been debated. Indeed, Russell and
Barrett (1999) find that the method used to create a typology of emotions
partly determines the number and types of emotions that authors identify.
They argue that early research tended to use facial expressions as a central
foundation for identifying core emotions; later research, however, found
that not all emotions have a corresponding facial gesture. Furthermore,
comparative studies suggest that cultures vary in the kinds of emotions that
they specifically identify by a name, thus, complicating the identification of
a core set of emotions (Russell & Barrett, 1999).
In the literature there is a distinction between emotions and affect.
According to Frijda (1986), emotions are “modes of relational action readi-
ness, either in the form of tendencies to establish, maintain or disrupt a
relationship with the environment” (p. 71). Emotions therefore provide
individuals with a readiness to act. Fredrickson (2001) describe emotion as
“multicomponent response tendencies that unfold over relatively short time
spans” (p. 218). In contrast “[a]ffect, a more general concept, refers to
144 STINE GRODAL AND NINA GRANQVIST
consciously accessible feelings” (Fredrickson, 2001, p. 218). In investigating
organizational fields, we suggest that affect which spans a longer time
frame is more important than momentarily experienced emotions. In
contrast to emotions that are viewed as discrete, affect can be organized
along a continuum. As depicted in Fig. 1, Russell and colleagues (Russell,
1980;Russell & Barrett, 1999) have suggested that affect has two basic
dimensions: pleasure and arousal. These two dimensions create a space
along which discrete emotions can be positioned ranging from (1) pleasant
to unpleasant and (2) activation to inactivation.
In Fig. 1, the first dimension of pleasant versus unpleasant relates to the
valence of the affect that is felt or expressed. Although there is a fuzzy
boundary between emotional experiences, they can often easily be classified
by having either a positive valence (e.g., excitement, happiness, and con-
tentment) or a negative valence (e.g., fear, disgust, and depressed). The
Activation
Deactivation
Pleasant
Unpleasant
alert
excited
elated
happy
contented
serene
relaxed
calm
fatigued
lethargic
depressed
sad
upset
stressed
nervous
tense
Surprise
Happiness
Fear
Anger
Disgust
Sadness
Excitement
Fig. 1. The Circumplex Model of Emotions. Source: Adapted from Russell and
Barrett (1999).
145Great Expectations: Discourse and Affect during Field Emergence
second dimension is activation versus inactivation. Indeed, some emotional
experiences are more prone to make the individual act (e.g., fear and excite-
ment), whereas others make the individual more passive (e.g., fatigued and
calm). An important aspect of the circumplex model is that a particular
emotion, such as fear or excitement, is not always felt at the same intensity.
Confronted with a belief that the world is going to come to an end people
might react with a strong feeling of fear, whereas if they hear that a market
in which they have invested assets might decline, the intensity of their fear
might be less. The level of intensity may have important consequences for
their actions. Indeed, it is the focus on activation that makes the model
potentially important for understanding field emergence, because a central
aspect of the relationship between discourse and participation is to under-
stand the mechanisms that facilitate action.
In general, previous research establishes the importance of discourses in
legitimating and creating shared meanings during field emergence. Yet, stu-
dies do not explain how discourses shape field participation. We examine
this link through an in-depth grounded study of the nanotechnology field.
We show that the construction and active evaluation of discourses on
future expectations induces affective responses among potential partici-
pants and thereby influences their propensity to participate in the field. By
doing so, we contribute by integrating affective explanations into the the-
ories of field emergence.
METHODS
Setting: Nanotechnology
In order to study how potential participants’ perceptions of the discourses
of a field influence their actions, we adopted a multi-method approach
drawing on both qualitative and quantitative analyses. We chose to study
the nanotechnology field, because it was an emerging domain of activity in
which discourses about the field occurred in abundance. The nanotechnol-
ogy field attracted intense attention from multiple stakeholders ranging
from scientists to venture capitalists to business executives and government
officials, thus providing a rich context to study the interpretation of dis-
courses. Nanotechnology is defined by the US government as the control of
matter at dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nm (National
Science and Technology Council, 2000). However, the definition of
146 STINE GRODAL AND NINA GRANQVIST
nanotechnology has been widely contested, because a definition based
merely on size lacks sufficient accuracy to draw boundaries around the field
(Granqvist & Laurila, 2011).
Nanotechnology is a powerful context in which to study the interrela-
tionship between discourse and field participation for several reasons. First,
it is fraught with ambiguity, uncertainty, the lack of shared norms and
understandings, and excitement about its future potential (Berube, 2006;
Granqvist et al., 2013). Second, during its emergence, few people had first-
hand experience of the nanotechnology field and they therefore had to rely
on second-hand interpretations to form their understandings of the nascent
field. Third, Mody (2004) has identified discourse around nanotechnology
as having an unusually “non-presentist” nature that is, it is both oriented
toward the future (addressing the great advance or grave disasters that
might emerge) and toward the past (looking into great technological leaps
and tragedies of bygone eras and relating nanotechnology to these). In
turn, nanotechnology is an extreme case as it provided ample leeway for
participants to construct understandings, driven particularly by the future
potential of the field, which can be considered a key way to navigate the
chaos and uncertainty present in such emergent contexts.
Data Collection
Our data collection consisted of three phases: ethnographic observations,
interviews, and archival data. Collecting these three different types of data
allowed us to triangulate between data sources (Edmondson & McManus,
2007). We began by conducting ethnographic observations, because it
allowed us to be immersed within the field and identify the main partici-
pants and discourses within the field. After this initial immersion we pro-
ceeded to conducting interviews and collecting archival material.
Phase 1: Ethnographic Observations
We conducted 25 ethnographic observations at conferences and networking
events. These observations took place during the period 20042006. All
these events were focused on the commercialization of nanotechnology and
attracted participants from multiple communities within the field; for exam-
ple, scientists, entrepreneurs, and government officials. Conferences and
networking events are major field configuring events (see Garud, 2008)
where participants actively discuss, contest, and negotiate the boundaries
of the field (Meyer, Gaba, & Colwell, 2005). They, therefore, serve as
147Great Expectations: Discourse and Affect during Field Emergence
suitable contexts to observe varying aspects of field emergence. The ethno-
graphic observations functioned as an initial entry point to understanding
discourses within the field.
Phase 2: Interviews
Based on the insights that we had during the ethnographic observations,
during 2005 and 2006 we conducted 136 semi-structured interviews with
people who were close to the subject domain of, or participants in the field
of nanotechnology. Some of our informants described themselves as parti-
cipating in the field, others had plans to do so in the future, while yet others
had decided against participating in the field. All our informants had at
some point considered participating in the field whether or not they ulti-
mately chose to do so. At the time, nanotechnology was widely considered
to be an emerging organizational field. We were able to avoid retrospective
bias because our informants talked about nanotechnology as they experi-
enced it at the time. This was particularly pertinent as we were studying
their current understandings, a construct which is prone to retrospective
reconstruction. Our questions guided informants to express their views on
the current status of nanotechnology from several perspectives.
Phase 3: Archival Research
To examine the discourse around nanotechnology in the media we searched
for the words “nanotech*” and “nanoscien*” among the major US news
and business publications published during 19862005. The basis for sam-
pling of the news stories was to select the first stories on the 1st and the
15th day of the month, or closest date thereafter. For those years with less
than 24 hits, all news articles were included. This sampling resulted in a
total of 327 news stories.
Data Analysis: Identifying Discourses, Expectations, and Affect
Our data analysis had already begun during the data collection phase
where we proceeded to collect more data based on our evolving under-
standing. After the fieldwork, we proceeded to a more structured analysis
by systematically coding the data in ATLAS.ti. Our structured data analy-
sis proceeded in three steps: (1) identifying discourses; (2) identifying expec-
tations for nanotechnology; and (3) identifying affective responses. We
detail these three steps below.
148 STINE GRODAL AND NINA GRANQVIST
Step 1: Identifying Discourses
Because we had already gained insight into the data through our informal
analysis during data collection, we began by qualitatively analyzing the
macro-level discourse on nanotechnology such as it appeared in our sample
of 327 news stories. Through our analyses, we identified two dominant dis-
courses about nanotechnology, both of which were rife with affective con-
tent and to which participants had affective reactions. The first discourse
describes nanotechnology as revolutionizing the entire way that society is
organized. We refer to this discourse as “the inflating discourse.” An exam-
ple can be found in Drexler’s 1986 book Engines of Creation, where he
describes the technological revolution that the future development in nano-
technology brings forward:
To have any hope of understanding our future, we must understand the consequences
of assemblers, disassemblers, and nanocomputers. They promise to bring changes as
profound as the industrial revolution, antibiotics, and nuclear weapons all rolled up in
one massive breakthrough.
Part of the inflating discourse also emphasized nanotechnology as a
commercial market, focusing on the future growth potential of the field
and its major impact on a broad array of scientific disciplines and commer-
cial products. We, for example, coded the following statement from Times
Daily, September 8, 2001, as an instance of such a discourse:
Nanotechnology promises to open up a universe of possibilities, from computers that
rival the brain in processing, communications and storage, to molecular motors, cellular
machines and drugs that target specific cells. Scientists expect it will eventually lead to
new materials that are stronger, lighter and cheaper to make. It’s expected to touch
nearly every industry: Power, biotech, computing, manufacturing.
After having identified this discourse around nanotechnology we selected
the two prominent phrases, “next big thing” and “trillion dollar market,”
and traced them in our newspaper data in order to map the use and devel-
opment of this discourse over time.
Our analysis also revealed a second discourse, which, in contrast to the
inflating discourse, emphasized the negative consequences of nanotechnol-
ogy; how nanotechnology might lead to the destruction of the planet, or
how investments into nanotechnology were going to be wasteful. We
termed this discourse “the deflating discourse.” We coded statements such
as the following as examples of the deflating discourse:
Replicating [nano]-assemblers and thinking machines pose basic threats to people and
life on Earth. Today’s organisms have abilities far from the limits of the possible, and
our machines are evolving faster than we are. Within a few decades they seem likely to
149Great Expectations: Discourse and Affect during Field Emergence
surpass us. Unless we learn to live with them in safety, our future will likely be both
exciting and short. (Drexler, Engines of Creation, 1986)
Step 2: Identifying Expectations for Nanotechnology
After we had identified the inflating and the deflating discourse around
nanotechnology, we analyzed how potential participants within the nano-
technology field constructed expectations by drawing on these discourses.
In particular, we coded the media accounts, interviews, and ethnographic
observations for any statements related to potential participants. From this
analysis we identified that while many potential participants reproduced
the inflating discourse, many also found the expectations embedded in this
discourse to be overblown, which led them to perceive that nanotechnology
is “hyped.” Based on our analyses, we defined hype as a discourse that par-
ticipants believe exaggerates both the current status and the future poten-
tial of the field. Participants, who thought that nanotechnology was
“hyped” would make statements such as “expectations to nanotechnology
are exaggerated” or “overblown” or just plainly “nanotechnology is
hyped.” Nearly all of the informants mentioned hype when they talked
about nanotechnology.
Step 3: Identifying Affective Responses
After we had identified the expectations that participants had regarding
nanotechnology, we examined their affective reactions to these expecta-
tions. In particular, we categorized affect along the dimensions of activa-
tion versus inactivation, and pleasant versus unpleasant. We coded
statements such as, “this is the next trillion dollar industry, an exciting
domain we invested in this firm because it might be the next Intel” as evi-
dence of high pleasant activation (excitement), and statements such as “this
is hype and we fear the field is going to collapse. We want nothing to do
with nano” as evidence of high unpleasant activation (fear). We also found
that the wide dissemination of the inflating and deflating discourses led to
affective reactions that were collectivistic that is, they were shared and
agreed upon among a social group. Based on these reactions we identified
“collective excitement” as a shared state of high pleasant activation. We
also identified “collective disbelief” as a shared state of low unpleasant acti-
vation. Based on this analysis we created an integrated model of the rela-
tionship between discourses, expectations, affect, and participation in
emerging fields.
150 STINE GRODAL AND NINA GRANQVIST
THE INFLATING AND DEFLATING DISCOURSES AND
AFFECT IN NANOTECHNOLOGY
Our analyses revealed a link between discourse, expectations, and affect. In
particular, expectations about the future development of the field were ele-
mental in shaping individuals’ perceptions of its appeal, and gave rise to
affective reactions. These in turn shaped individuals’ participation (or non-
participation) in the field and their consequent production of discourses
about the field. In the following sections we develop a process model where
we examine the relationship between discourse, expectations, and affect. In
our model, we show a circular reinforcing dynamic of positive and negative
affective reactions to the inflating and deflating discourses.
Inflating Discourse and Affective Reactions
Much of the media discourse depicted nanotechnology as a revolutionary
technology that inevitably would have a significant impact on several areas
of science, technology, business, and society at large, thereby changing
many elements of the modern world. The following passage exemplifies the
inflating discourse:
This will be man’s ultimate technological breakthrough, changing how we live far more
than the discovery of electricity, the invention of the automobile, or the creation of the
atomic bomb. This emerging field is called nanotechnology. (The Washington Post,
December 21, 1986)
The inflating discourse drew on metaphors of past or existing technolo-
gies that have radically changed humankind. For example, the quote above
compares nanotechnology with electricity, the invention of the automobile,
and the creation of the atomic bomb. Characteristic of the inflating dis-
course was that it produced a vision of the future where nanotechnology
products offer superior qualities to existing technologies, and enabled
entirely new products and services. For example, the following quote claims
that something quite mundane (bricks) will soon be able to do something
very sophisticated (repair themselves).
In the not-so-distant future, bricks in new homes may repair themselves when cracks
appear. Cars may be coated with a diamond-strength layer that will guard against
scratches. Doctors might be able to diagnose hundreds of illnesses by placing a droplet
of blood in a machine and reading the results in a few seconds. All those scenarios, and
151Great Expectations: Discourse and Affect during Field Emergence
many more, are conceivable through the use of nanotechnology. (Los Angeles Times,
February 3, 2000)
This discourse also underlines that some of these applications we cannot
even foresee nor imagine today. These great expectations of nanotechnol-
ogy included also visions about the creation of new larger economic
markets:
In nanotechnology, some scientists see nothing less than another state of matter add-
ing “surface” to the existing list of solid, liquid, gas and plasma. The potential to move
atoms at will, thus enhancing and augmenting existing structures and even creating new
ones, is unprecedented. Impressed by stories about nanotechnology’s $1 trillion market
potential, governments have started dealing out money for nano-research in a big way.
Chipmakers have also been attracted to it, seeing in nanotechnology a set of tools that
will help them postpone the end of Moore’s Law or the emergence of Moore’s
Second Law, which threatens to drive the cost of chipmaking plants up to $10 billion
by 2010. (The Economist, March 13, 2003)
In order to capture the spread of inflating discourse over time, we ana-
lyzed the occurrence in the media of the two phrases, “next big thing” and
“trillion dollar market,” that, according to our analyses, were central to
how participants talked about the revolutionary nature of nanotechnology.
Fig. 2 establishes that the use of the two phrases began to increase around
0.020
“Trillion Dollar” and “Next Big Thing”
0.015
0.010
Percentage of Articles
0.005
0.000
1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995
Year
1997 1999 2001 2003 2005
$1 trillion
Next big thing
Fig. 2. Mentions of “Next Big Thing” and “1 Trillion Dollar Market” in
Nanotechnology Articles in the Top 50 US Newspapers.
152 STINE GRODAL AND NINA GRANQVIST
the mid-1990s. The use of these phrases increased dramatically in near uni-
son, to peak around 2003, after which their use waned slightly. The
figure establishes that the positive expectations were at their height during
early to mid-2000s, coinciding with our empirical fieldwork.
In the following sections, we analyze the reactions that potential partici-
pants had to the inflating discourse in more detail.
Affective Reactions to the Inflating Discourse
All our informants stated that people had great expectations about the
future of nanotechnology. Many of these expectations had been shaped by
the way nanotechnology was depicted in the media. As Robert Patterson, a
patent lawyer explained, he had read about nanotechnology in both scienti-
fic and nonscientific publications:
Nanotechnology is one of those things that’s in all kinds of publications both scientific
and non-scientific that I look at. I may have heard about it first in some non-patent
area like Wired magazine.
Our informants’ reactions to discourses about nanotechnology were often
ripe with affect.
Most participants reacted to the inflating discourse with affect that was
pleasant and highly activating, resembling excitement. For instance, one of
the early participants in the field, Rasmus Madison, described the early
reactions to nanotechnology:
I think at that point in time simply the awareness that it would be possible to arrange
things with molecular precision; that someday this manufacturing technology would be
feasible. I think just the idea that this would be feasible was getting people excited
because it really hadn’t been articulated before. And Drexler, of course, articulated this
and clearly described some of the consequences and made it clear that this kind of abil-
ity would have a big impact. So I think that was sort of the core thing that got people
excited about it.
Indeed, another early participant, Carla Post, emphasized how it was
these exciting ideas that motivated her to participate:
I was very environmentally oriented, environment was my big thing, so the idea that
you could build things with complete control and not have chemical pollution at all,
the no waste concept, is an extremely exciting idea. That was the thing that really
turned me on.
When looking into who actually were likely to have a positive affective
reaction to the great expectations depicted in the inflating discourse, we
found that participants who had less direct contact with the technology
153Great Expectations: Discourse and Affect during Field Emergence
had more abstracted understandings of its current status and advantages.
Such participants talked about the future of nanotechnology by referring
to concepts and phrases that they had read about in books and media, or
heard in nanotechnology events. The inflating discourse was laden with
bold expectations, which attracted people to join the field. For example,
Nate Walling, an early participant in the field, expressed his motivations to
participate:
I became interested in nanotechnology probably in the late 1980s due in no small part
to the work of Christine Peterson and Eric Drexler and the books Engines of Creation
and Unbounding the Future. And that intrigued me, because I felt nanotechnology had a
science fiction appeal to it, a very futuristic appeal to it, and a potential to really trans-
form all aspects of technology and engineering and culture as we know it, eventually.
Nate had little substantial knowledge about the technology, and he
became involved in the field because he read books about the promise of
the technology. Some of the second-hand reports about the future of the
field were highly speculative and distanced from the actual technological
development at the time, yet still played a central role in stimulating inter-
est and involvement within the field.
Further, Alan Wang, an executive at the aerospace company, AeroTech,
stated how people’s affective responses to nanotechnology drove their
wishes to participate in nanotechnology:
So you’re going to have all these young folks that are passionate. I probably get two e-
mails a week from the child of some employee of [my company] wanting to know where
to go to school to study nanotech.
Alan expresses that many people who are not already involved in the
field are attracted to participating within it, because they are exposed to
inflating discourse.
Collective Excitement and the Inflating Discourse
We found that the wide dissemination of the inflating discourse meant that
many people’s reactions to these discourses was not based solely on their
own judgment, but fueled by the collective excitement that is a shared
pleasant affective state that exposure to the discourse evoked. The gen-
eral excitement associated with nanotechnology meant that it became a
resource that people could use. Indeed, use contributed to the reproduction
of the inflating discourse. In particular, the belief that the inflating dis-
course generated collective excitement led many people to claim member-
ship in the field. For example, Carl Bjo
¨rk, Chief Scientist at consumer
electronics company Devisco Ltd., discussed that many companies had
154 STINE GRODAL AND NINA GRANQVIST
begun to claim membership in the nanotechnology field by adopting the
nano-label while not changing their actual activities:
According to web analyses …an amazing amount of nanotechnology firms have been
established, the explosion of the use of nano-word. It doesn’t reflect at all how the
activities in this domain have evolved. Old companies have adopted nano-label, or the
name of the company has changed, or they have new nano-departments. Before they
called their technology with another name, and now they have added that with nano.
Hans Peter Hansen, Chief Scientist of a chemical company Olsen
Chemistry Ltd., explained how his firm has used this exact strategy as they
began to associate their firm with the nanotechnology field:
You do just what you do, and then recently, within the last 10 years …nanotechnology
has come up as a separate field of research and business and then we could say that this
is exactly what we do …And that is actually the way it has come into the company. So
we still do more or less the same thing that we always have done but now we got a new
name.
In judging the collective excitement around nanotechnology some people
also drew on their knowledge of prior technology cycles and their beliefs
that nanotechnology was going to develop similarly. Harry Elgin, CEO of
a nonprofit organization Comnex, for example, stated:
If you get in early then you have the possibility of becoming a key player once the
industry matures. We felt that it was the right time to get into the industry.
Because Harry had experience from other industries that initially were
very uncertain but later developed into important industries, he concluded
that nanotechnology was going to follow a similar path. In his view, nano-
technology was so early in its development that it was still possible to enter
into the field and become a dominant player. In turn, the expectations
Harry had about the future of nanotechnology were important in guiding
his decision to found Comnex.
Some of the participants claimed membership in nanotechnology to ben-
efit from the collective excitement. Henrik, the CEO of Cantideon, for
example, expressed excitement that that he believed others would experi-
ence if he began to label his company as “nanotechnology”:
So [nanotech] is a buzzword that people trigger on and a lot of other companies like
some of our customers want to have a part of this …They want to get into this area,
and therefore it’s a good buzzword to use “nanotechnology.”
According to Henrik, rather than changing their actions, firms were
more interested in becoming part of nanotechnology because of the buzz,
155Great Expectations: Discourse and Affect during Field Emergence
or interest and positive expectations around the technology. Alex Nurmi,
CEO of a materials start-up Flamox, confirmed such actions and stated the
following:
When we invented this in 1992, we never referred to it as nanotechnology. Only when
we founded Flamox and looked for a sexier name for this technology, we named it
Advanced Nanoparticle Layering Method, and that way entered the nanoworld.
It is clear that the firm were on the lookout for a suitable, exciting name
for their technology. Thus, the collective excitement around nanotechnol-
ogy acted as a resource for the firm, and motivated them to adopt the
nanotechnology label and participate in the field. Similarly, Yusuf Khalil,
vice president of a sensors start-up NanoQuest, explains how their firm
benefited from the excitement created by the inflating discourse:
While our name is [NanoQuest] and our email is [www.nanoquest.com], we are excited
about some of the publicity and enthusiasm and in some cases hype that nanotech can
generate …It has been an advantage in terms of profile and sort of separating us from
a lot of other companies that are out there.
According to Yusuf, joining in the field was closely related to tapping
into the excitement around the development of the field.
As a conclusion, our data shows that the collective excitement around
nanotechnology motivated many potential participants to join the field and
participate in the reproduction of the inflating discourse.
The Deflating Discourse and Affective Reactions
We found that not only an inflating discourse, but also a deflating dis-
course existed around nanotechnology. The latter emphasized that nano-
technology would cause destruction and wipe out the civilization as we
know it. An example of this discourse is what became named the “gray
goo” scenario that is that nanotechnology might turn the whole world
into a mass of “goo.” Drexler describes this scenario in his 1986 book
Engines of Creation:
[E]arly assembler-based replicators could beat the most advanced modern organisms.
“Plants” with “leaves” no more efficient than today’s solar cells could outcompete real
plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough, omnivorous “bacteria”
could out-compete real bacteria: they could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly,
and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily
be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop at least if we made no preparation.
156 STINE GRODAL AND NINA GRANQVIST
We have trouble enough controlling viruses and fruit flies. Among the cognoscenti of
nanotechnology, this threat has become known as the “gray goo problem.”
Also embedded in the deflating discourse were more mundane concerns
that disseminated in the media about the damage that nanotechnology
might cause to the environment and human health. For example, in 2004
news broke that nano-particles might cause damage to the environment,
which evoked many environmentally conscious people to become involved
in the field. The quote below exemplifies this call to arms by the Organic
Consumer Organization:
Latest toxic warning shows nanoparticles cause brain damage in aquatic species
and highlights need for a moratorium on the release of new nanomaterials …. How
many warnings do government regulators require before they take action to ensure
that uses of nanoparticles are safe before workers in production facilities are harmed
and before consumers are further exposed? (Organic Consumers Organization website,
April 1, 2004)
This fear of the toxicity of nanotechnology also spilled over into how
consumers considered company products. As reported in The New York
Times, January 8, 2005:
[E]ffort to shrink particles down to the molecular level is hitting snags. In Europe, a
consumer reaction against nanotechnology research is on the rise, similar to the outcry
against irradiated foods and genetically engineered crops. “There is always a fear that
nanoparticles will attack the body,” Mr. Gordon [President of the Canadian
NanoBusiness Alliance] conceded. The fears are not without logic after all, particles
tiny enough to penetrate several layers of skin could, at least in theory, pierce all of
them, enter the bloodstream, and wind up in organs for which they were not intended.
Perhaps not surprisingly, skin care companies are proceeding warily in the nanoscience
world.
This deflating discourse stood in opposition to the inflating discourse,
and suggested that nanotechnology was posed to destroy the world, or that
at least would pose health and environmental risks. The deflating discourse
generated affective reactions among potential participants.
Affective Reactions to the Deflating Discourse
The deflating discourse caused many affective reactions. In particular, the
concerns about the potential future development mobilized people to parti-
cipate in the field, because they felt that something needed to be done
in order to save the world from the coming era of nanotechnology.
157Great Expectations: Discourse and Affect during Field Emergence
A particularly prominent expression of this fear came from Bill Joy’s article
in Wired, warning against the dangers of nanotechnology:
[I]t was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the
dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met
Ray Kurzweil, the deservedly famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind
and many other amazing things …. While we were talking, Ray approached and a con-
versation began, the subject of which haunts me to this day …. I already knew that
new technologies like genetic engineering and nanotechnology were giving us the power
to remake the world, but a realistic and imminent scenario for intelligent robots sur-
prised me …In the hotel bar, Ray gave me a partial preprint of his then-forthcoming
book The Age of Spiritual Machines, which outlined a utopia he foresaw one in which
humans gained near immortality by becoming one with robotic technology. On reading
it, my sense of unease only intensified; I felt sure he had to be understating the dangers,
understating the probability of a bad outcome along this path. (Bill Joy, “Why the
Future does not Need Us,” Wired issues 8.04, April 2000)
Bill Joy, the cofounder of Sun Microsystems, was taken seriously, and
the article gained worldwide attention; his dystopian views strongly shaped
the public understanding of nanotechnology. Likewise, an entrepreneur
Mark Christensen expressed:
Well, I think what they [the group around Drexler] have done is they’ve got people
frightened, like All Gore and the military, by saying, “Look this anybody who
figures this out, it’s going to change everything.” But it’s a little bit like saying anybody
who invents a Star Trek-like transporter will change everything. And that’s true it’s just
that we have no idea how to do a transporter and we also have no idea how to do the
Eric Drexler style nanotechnology and no evidence that it can be done.
Not only did the deflating discourse cause a high unpleasant emotional
response due to the vision that the end of the world was near, but it also
challenged the more mundane perceptions of whether the field is viable.
Indeed, informants were fearful that people participated in the field only to
gain access to resources and lacked long-term commitment. Micke Persson,
Professor of Physics expressed his worry that the field might collapse as a
result:
There has been so much buzz around it …Many firms join [nano initiatives] and adopt
the word. Do they really have use for it? I am afraid that these firms live in a quarterly
economy and they lose their interest. We want that participants adopt a long time
frame.
Micke was concerned that it was risky to invest any more time and
resources in a field that might not have a future. In our data, the expecta-
tions that the field might collapse stalled participation. As we will address
158 STINE GRODAL AND NINA GRANQVIST
in the next section, the deflating discourse led to a collective disbelief in
the field.
Collective Disbelief Resulting from Inflating Discourse
In addition to the deflating discourse, which emphasized the negative con-
sequences of nanotechnology, the wide dissemination of the inflating dis-
course created a backlash as many people believed the expectations and
excitement embedded in it were unrealistic. This gave rise to a feeling of
collective disbelief and led to an amplification of the deflating discourse.
Many of our informants referred to the inflating discourse as “hype.” For
example, Chris Hansen, CEO of PicoSolar, was skeptical that the nano-
technology vision would ever come to fruition:
Hope spring’s eternal right? Somehow the future is brighter than the present. And often
times we don’t learn as well from the past as we should. Those who don’t study the
past are doomed to repeat it as Winston Churchill said. I think the nanotech hype is
somewhat overdone.
Chris expressed that focusing on the future may be more elevating than
looking into the current status of technology, but he also referred to the
past failures of previous technology hypes and estimates that expectations
around nanotechnology may not be realistic.
Many participants had experiences with technologies that had failed to
deliver on their expectations. According to their accounts, false expecta-
tions often result from collective excitement and lack of specific knowledge
to differentiate between hypes and reality. Varun Manic, an executive at
StateSolid, expressed this sentiment:
I think it [hype] builds a false level of expectations. Right now there are people saying,
“Well, we have put all this money into nanotechnology, but where are the billions of
dollars we expected to see…?” So I think that there could be a potential backlash in
Congress: “Where are all the products that you people promised us?” When, actually, a
lot of them are hidden because they’re basically small amounts of material into a poly-
mer giving some new performance. And it takes longer for us to introduce nanotechnol-
ogy and nanoelectronics which is a new material than it would in other
applications. So I think it is just about trying to set expectations right over time.
The expectations embedded in the inflating discourse, the incremental,
mundane steps forward, may disillusion the advocates. Some of our infor-
mants perceived that because hypes create such overblown expectations,
there is a risk for a backlash, which may seriously hamper the development
of the field.
159Great Expectations: Discourse and Affect during Field Emergence
Moreover, many of the informants identified nanotechnology as but one
in the continuum of hyped technologies. According to Michael McMagee,
a researcher in a chemical company, XeRonium:
Five years ago that [the hyped technology] was biotechnology, everything had to be
biotechnology. Of course we didn’t like that so much because we don’t do anything
which has to do with bio.
Michael acknowledged that technology fashions existed, but for his firm
it was beneficial that nanotechnology was hyped, because it facilitated
resource acquisition. However, his view that attention to technology tends
to be cyclical also highlights the worry that interest in nanotechnology
might only be temporary. The belief that technologies are cyclical and thus
an awareness of the collective excitement meant that some participants had
a more critical stance toward nanotechnology. Indeed, we found that those
participants worried that the nanotechnology field was going to collapse,
because it could not live up to the expectations.
Many of our informants stated that previous experiences of the collapse
of technology trends made various actors cautious about nanotechnology.
A typical example of this is Kevin Macy, manager of an instrumentations
company ExeScope, who said:
Nanotechnology is still a frontier research area and therefore it is difficult to really take
most of this technology and make it into a commercialized product. There are so many
things that have not been solved. And a lot of people have burnt their fingers on that,
for example venture capitalists.
Kevin noted that the early stage of nanotechnology made people within
the industry suspicious of its future success. In their prior experience, for
example, venture capitalists have lost money on frontier research, with
uncertain time spans for the development of products and generation of
revenue. Many industry players viewed nanotechnology as a fashionable
but undeveloped domain, and based on this experience they harbored cer-
tain expectations and doubts about its prospects.
More generally, we found that the collective disbeliefs created affective
reactions. For people, who were already vested in the field, these affective
reactions were unpleasant and high in activation and motivated them to
exit the field. In contrast, for participants who had not yet invested in the
field the affective reactions still tended to be unpleasant but inactivating
such that they were less motivated to participate. In the following section
we present a framework that summarizes our findings.
160 STINE GRODAL AND NINA GRANQVIST
Interplay of Discourses, Expectations, Affect, and Participation in
Emerging Fields
Fig. 3 presents the model that we derive from our analyses. We show that
discourse, expectations, affective responses, and field participation are
interrelated. In particular, discourses about an emerging field are impor-
tant, because in such contexts potential participants have little direct
experience most of their perceptions about the field are therefore shaped
by the available discourses. Our study shows that discourses about the field
shape the expectations that potential participants have about the future of
the field, which elicits affective responses, and influences participation.
We identified an inflating and a deflating discourse that differed in their
consequences for field participation. Our data shows that in response to the
inflating discourse, participants experienced excitement about the field,
which is a pleasant high activation affect. This affective experience aroused
participants, motivated them to engage in the field, and created collective
excitement. Participants’ experiences of collective excitement influenced the
propensity to reproduce the inflating discourse, which further motivated
their and others’ participation in the field. For those who already
Inflating
discourses
Deflating
discourses
Pleasant affective
reactions with high
activation
Unpleasant affective
reactions with high
activation
Collective
excitement
Collective
disbelief
Inflating cycle of discourse
Deflating cycle of discourse
Field
participation
Production and
reproduction
of inflating
discourses
+
+
–
–
Production and
reproduction of
deflating
discourses
Positive
expectations
Negative
expectations
Fig. 3. Theoretical Model: Discourse, Affect, and Participation during Field
Emergence.
161Great Expectations: Discourse and Affect during Field Emergence
participated in the field, the positive discourse enforced their choices and
they expressed calmness and contentment, which are pleasant affective
reactions with low activation, leading them to maintain the status quo in
terms of field participation.
In contrast, our data shows that the participants had two different types
of affective responses to the deflating discourse. Those who were already
active in the field stated that they feared its collapse, which is an unpleasant
affective reaction with high activation. Those participants, who were not
yet active in the field, expressed disinterest or disbelief regarding its future
potential, which are unpleasant affective reactions with low activation.
Both these responses thereby reduced field participation. In addition, our
informants’ experienced collective disbelief, which further demotivated par-
ticipation in the field.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Institutionalists have recently begun to highlight the void in our under-
standing of the link between different institutional arrangements and emo-
tions (Voronov & Vince, 2012). The existing literature on the role of
discourse in field emergence has primarily emphasized how discourses con-
struct shared understandings among field members (Lawrence & Phillips,
2004;Maguire & Hardy, 2006). Studies further suggest that expectations
about how the field will develop in the future has an impact on how new
fields emerge (Brown & Michael, 2003). Aldrich and Fiol (1994) theorize
that positive expectations about the field’s future lead participants to invest
time and resources into nascent fields, whereas negative expectations ham-
per their development. The particular characteristic of emerging fields is
that they are ambiguous, potential-driven, and future oriented because they
often lack the kind of history or even current stage of development that
can justify their existence (Kaplan & Tripsas, 2008).
While scholars have made great progress in understanding the role of
discourses in organizational fields, they have given short change to the role
that affective reactions might play in shaping this relationship. This is sur-
prising given that studies have shown that affect is important to organiza-
tional functioning (Elsbach & Barr, 1999;Hochschild, 1979;Quy, 1999),
and that it forms a basis for action (Plutchik, 1980). Our study contributes
to filling this void by showing that affective responses to discourses play an
important role in field emergence. Overall, we uncover that affect is an
important, yet understudied dynamic that drive field emergence. We find
162 STINE GRODAL AND NINA GRANQVIST
that given the lack of material artifacts and first-hand knowledge, the col-
lective construction of technological expectations is predominantly dissemi-
nated and enacted through discourse. Further, discourses embed and
disseminate expectations about the field, which in turn give rise to affective
reactions. We found that participants’ affective responses to future expecta-
tions led them to both participate in and generate discourse about the field.
We argue that it is these affective reactions that ultimately are a major dri-
ver of decisions to participate. Beliefs about these affective reactions
become a resource that potential participants can draw upon to serve their
own interests. Our study thereby provides a more nuanced description of
the relationship between discourses and field emergence by theorizing the
importance of expectations and affective reactions.
Moreover, research has established that discourses play an important
role in legitimating novel actions (Vaara & Monin, 2010;Vaara & Tienari,
2008). According to Phillips et al. (2004), discourses that are not highly
contested are more likely to facilitate the creation of institutions. Our find-
ings extend these arguments by showing that it is not only the legitimate
and uncontested discourses that have constitutive power in emerging fields,
but also those that are affective and have the capacity to inspire people and
get them to act. We find that in the early stage of emerging fields these
affective discourses inspire and stimulate participation. We uncover that
the effect of discourses in stimulating field emergence does not only depend
on legitimate claims, but also on emotionally activating claims.
Finally, we show that discourses shape perceptions of uncertainty by
constructing possible scenarios about the future of the field, which helps
potential participants direct their actions. Our study establishes that much
of the discourse in emerging fields centers on their future potential. In
emerging fields, most of the potential participants lack the ability to judge
the expectations such as they are represented in the often affectively acti-
vating discourse about the glorious future. We argue that it is through this
activation, combined with the lack of ability to judge the validity of dis-
course, that future expectations are consequential for inducing participa-
tion, perhaps even more so than the actual material and substantive
foundations. The analyses of media texts and informants’ accounts clearly
establish that certain expectations become embedded in discourses and dis-
seminated widely, thus influencing action in fields. As such, our study aug-
ments existing research by showing that discourses are not only important
for field emergence, but in more general terms, they are at the core of an
overlooked process in which they produce future expectations, which gives
rise to affective responses among potential field participants.
163Great Expectations: Discourse and Affect during Field Emergence
Our research establishes that expectations about the future of an emer-
ging field are a key determinant for explaining participation in it. We iden-
tify that the expectations that participants have about a field create affective
responses, which motivates them to act. Our study finds that discourses
about the future of a field generate beliefs and affect that give rise to both
action and material investments in the field. We contribute to theories of
field emergence by linking the discourses that are disseminated about the
field with actors’ expectations about the field development, and their affec-
tive responses, which ultimately shapes their propensity to participate.
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