This paper explores the dynamics underlying integration of the international grain markets of the nineteenth century. It demonstrates that ‘deep’ integration implied changes to market structures, firm strategies and the commodity being marketed. Coordination within grain markets occurred at...

When science could not provide a solution to transaction problems in the British wire industry c.1880, market groups had to negotiate a business solution. This involved converging towards a 'one-size-fits-all' standard: a process requiring compromises and cooperation between competitive firms,...

Design standards are carriers and creators of facts, enabling facts about product value to travel between groups, and assisting in the creation of product value by establishing a reference or comparison against which product attributes are compared. However, when design standards are not...

Measurement standards are like institutional facts – they enable the travel of information across different domains: geographical, social, institutional or contextual. Uncovering the reasons underlying how and why measurement standards are adopted can provide insights into how ‘well’ such...

This paper is motivated by two broad questions: how is technology transferred from academia to non-academic domains, and how well do facts within these technologies travel? These questions are explored in the context of a particular extension education program in Tamil Nadu, south India. The...