The establishment and institutionalization of technology assessment in Germany was monitored and supported by members of the research unit even before it was formally adopted. When the research unit was created, classical technology assessment was expanded and complemented by research on technology development-the systematic analysis of effects that societal factors have on the development of technology itself. Interest in technology policy also grew. In addition to conducting research projects, publishing articles, and organizing scientific conferences, the research unit was a major actor in the creation of the Network for Social Science Research on Technology.

The work of the research unit progressed in two programmatic phases, the first from 1989-1994, then 1994-2002. The first generation of projects focused on the comparative analysis of the development of selected technologies in organizations and the influence that an organization’s traditions and structures have on that process. The innovation processes relating to writing technologies and engine technologies for motor vehicles represented the technological core of the program. The theoretical orientation was to understand how organizational culture and visions shape organizational perceptions, policies and products.

Results from the first generation of projects shaped the conceptual foundations for the second generation and suggested new fields of empirical research. Attention shifted from historical reconstruction of processes that led to existing technologies toward the study of technologies as they emerge in order to understand how early usage patterns and habits influence the form and design of new technologies. Emphasis moved from a relatively static view of organizational culture toward more dynamic models of organizational learning in order to understand organizational behavior in diverse and turbulent environments. Increased attention was devoted to factors transcending organizations, such as visions of technologies, which affect the direction of technological developments or trigger the development of new technologies.

The dominant role of automobiles and possible perspectives for a "post-automobile mobility" were central issues in the research projects. As social individualization and the diversity of life styles had consequences for the organization of transport. In turn, quick and flexibly available means of transport, such as the automobile, broadened the scope of an individual’s alternative and promoted social differentiation. Evidently, cars had lost none of their attraction, despite their prevalence and the traffic jams in which their users became trapped. Nonetheless, the adverse impacts of the ever greater volume clearly had to be contained. Social science research on transport and mobility, therefore, concentrated on the scope for and restrictions on intermodal transport concepts, especially those relating to new ways of using cars.

From 1993 to 1998 the members of the project group studied the Internet as it developed from an academic phenomenon into a mass medium. The perception of 'being hooked up', which still had an aura of the sensational in the mid-1990s, became so commonplace that the line between the virtual world and the real world was disappearing. The new avenues for action and experience arising from the link between immateriality, the sameness of global space-time, and broadened latitudes for representing human beings and objects had become so socially integrated that they almost perceived as a natural part of public life. But that does not mean that the Internet had become a mass medium like the television: Whether the Internet is assimilating the traditional forms of social organization and will therefore allow itself to be governed in the conventional sense remains an open question.

¬Server of the Project Group

The work in this area proceeded along two paths during the period 1994-2002. One strand involved conducting several empirical research projects to explore key factors affecting organizational learning in different countries and to understand the role of various kinds of boundary spanning agents of organizational learning. The other strand entailed generating an overview over the state of the art and setting the agenda for the field through the management of an international network on organizational learning funded by the Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz Foundation.