Valentin Rottensteiner Completes Doctorate on Semiconductor Industry

“‘With Great Power There Must Also Come Great Responsibility’: How the Semiconductor Industry Changes in Light of Geopolitical and Supply Chain Disruptions” is the title of Valentin Rottensteiner’s dissertation, which he successfully defended at the University of Duisburg-Essen at the end of July. In light of the disruptive effects of geopolitical conflicts and the COVID-19 pandemic on transnational networks in the semiconductor industry, the dissertation explores how, faced with such uncertainty, industry actors attempt to stabilize their expectations on a cognitive level in order to make sense of the market. Using a network discourse analysis, the study examines which concepts actors use, how they form alliances around certain concepts, and which actors are able to define them. Rottensteiner's work combines insights from the sociology of markets with newer approaches to resilience in supply chains. His dissertation was supervised by Sigrid Quack, senior professor for sociology at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Valentin Rottensteiner was a doctoral researcher at the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy from 2021.