Technocrats and Technopreneurs - Power paradoxes in Singapore's national Innovation System

Abstract

This paper explores the complex power relationship in Singapore’s National Innovation System (NIS), specifically between two major groups of players, namely, the technology entrepreneurs or ‘technopreneurs’ and NIS bureaucrats and policy makers or ‘technocrats’ in the context of a NIS that is itself struggling to reconcile the contradictions between ‘planning’ against ‘entrepreneurship’ as it seeks to transform itself to support a more entrepreneurial and knowledge-based economy for the twenty-first century. The research follows Alvesson & Willmott’s (1992) critical theory agenda in that there is value in studying tensions between key groups in the inter-organisational space and in particular critiquing the exercise of power in the context of a NIS. The study in particular takes up Hamilton-Hart’s (2000) call for more research to be done on the quality of ties between state and non-state actors in Singapore. In addition, to examine issues beyond the superficial exercise of power, the study uses Lukes’ (1974) three-dimensional classification of power as a framework to study both observable and unobservable exercises of power between the technocrats and technopreneurs. The paper argues that unlike the consensual power relationship that is assumed, the power relationship is largely tilted towards the technocrats and away from the technopreneurs. Using Hampden-Turner’s (1990; 2000) dilemma methodology as an interpretive lens in which to analyse the relationships between the technocrats and technopreneurs, the research found three major patterns of power paradoxes in which the power relationship is skewed towards the technocrats. The paper concludes with a few observations that the NIS may be undergoing a shift in the power-relationship to correct some of these imbalances but cautions that these changes could take time and may be met with resistance.