Growing intensity of university-industry ties has generated an intense debate about the changing norms and practices of academic scientific work. This study challenges the protagonists' views on the emergence of a dominant market ethos in academic science and growing influence of the 'new school' entrepreneurial scientists. It argues that academic scientists are active agents seeking to shape the relationships between science and business, and shows continued diversity in their work orientations. Drawing on neo-institutional theory and the notion of 'boundary work', the study examines how scientists seek to protect and negotiate their positions, and also make sense of their professional role identities. It identifies four different orientations: the 'traditional' and 'entrepreneurial', with two hybrid types in between. The hybrids are the dominant category and are particularly adept at exploiting the ambiguities of 'boundary work' between academia and industry. The study is based on 36 interviews and a survey sample of 734 academic scientists from five UK research universities.

From ‘Ivory Tower Traditionalists’ to ‘Entrepreneurial Scientists’?: Academic Scientists in Fuzzy University—Industry Boundaries

Growing intensity of university-industry ties has generated an intense debate about the changing norms and practices of academic scientific work. This study challenges the protagonists’ views on the emergence of a dominant market ethos in academic science and growing influence of the ‘new school’ entrepreneurial scientists. It argues that academic scientists are active agents seeking to shape the relationships between science and business, and shows continued diversity in their work orientations. Drawing on neo-institutional theory and the notion of ‘boundary work’, the study examines how scientists seek to protect and negotiate their positions, and also make sense of their professional role identities. It identifies four different orientations, the ‘traditional’ and ‘entrepreneurial’, with two hybrid types in between. The hybrids are the dominant category and are particularly adept at exploiting the ambiguities of ‘boundary work’ between academia and industry. The study is based on 36 interviews and a survey sample of 734 academic scientists from five UK research universities.

From ‘ivory tower traditionalists’ to ‘entrepreneurial scientists’? academic scientists in fuzzy university-industry boundaries

Observing that organizational professionals view themselves as employees of special status, resulting among other things in their demand for autonomy, Raelin digs down into the basis for their difficulty integrating into organizations. After examining the peculiarities of their education and early socialization experiences, he relates five features of professional life which, based on his ongoing research and consulting work, predispose professionals to resist managerial control.

The basis for the professional's resistance to managerial control

This study examined dimensions and levels of career orientations and their correlation with work-related outcome criteria among industrial R&D professionals. Questionnaire data were obtained in 11 West German, 4 British, and 2 US R&D units of large industrial companies. Respondents were 729 West German, 217 British, and 124 US scientists and engineers. Managerial career orientation and professional/scientific career orientation emerged from factor and scale analyses as two independent orientation dimensions with similar meaning across the three countries and the 17 R&D organizations. Results indicated significant cross-country differences in levels of professional/scientific career orientation, but not in levels of managerial career orientation. Significant differences in levels of both orientation dimensions were detected between R&D units within countries. Distinctive characteristics of West German firms employing R&D staff with particularly strong professional/scientific or managerial career orientations are suggested. Managerial and professional/scientific career orientations were found to be differentially related to objective indicators and self-ratings of research performance. Directions for future research and managerial implications for selecting and rewarding R&D employees with different patterns of career orientations are discussed.

Career orientations in different countries and companies: an empirical investigation of west german, british and us industrial r&d professionals[1]

This thesis presents a comparative sociological investigation of the laboratory life-world of scientists. In particular, the thesis deals with the organisation of science and the ways in which the orientations of scientists and their research activity are stractured in laboratories across national and cultural contexts. Theoretically, the thesis employs a range of theoretical concepts drawn from general sociology, the sociology of knowledge, phenomenology, political sociology of science, symbolic interaction theory and the social history of science. The most influential theoretical stteam that formed the basis for the action and meanmg approach used in the analysis of science, is the 'interpretive' perspective drawn most centtally from the works of Schutz, Weber and Mannheim. The theoretical framework developed in the first part of the thesis forms a coherent basis for the empirical investigation presented in the second part through the methodology which is specifically developed to carry the 'interpretive' perspective of the theory into methodological assumptions and practice. The theoretical framework provides a basis for analysis of the action and meaning context of scientists within, and across two laboratory 'structures', as well as for analysis of interaction of the scientists with wider groups and agencies in the ttans-laboratory and socio-historical contexts. The CFTRI/CSIR (in a non-Western culture context) and die FRL/CSIRO (in a Western culture context) formed the basis for empirical exploration through sixteen propositions drawn from the theory and the history of the laboratory case studies. The field research conducted in this thesis involved the generation of a 'method of multiple feedback'. This method was generated as epistemological frame that aligned with the interpretationist frame of theory in the thesis. Following Mannheim, this method sought not only to observe at "objective" level from (vi) without the subjective experience of scientists, but to draw the scientist-actor's own construction of expressive, evidential and objective meaning into the analysis of science in its institutional framework. This method involved the generation of data at five different levels of generahty, employing feedback between these levels to form an overall interpretive synthesis of the relation between history, culture, politics, the scientific profession and the experience of scientist-actors. The overall picture presented in this thesis reflects that scientific research and the action of scientists in laboratories are structured through a dynamic social process within particular social, political, cultural and historic contexts relative to the laboratory context. On the basis of the theory and empirical research contained in the two case studies, the thesis demonsttates that scientists in CFTRI/CSIR and FRL/CSIRO are governed by two distinct traditions in research 'cultures' specific to the laboratory's national and cultural context. Towards the evolution of specific research 'cultures', the two laboratory organisations were found to be in constant negotiation with the socio-economic and political environment surrounding the institutions. Whilst the scientific research in CFTRI was found to be influenced by the utilitarian research 'culture' of CSIR, the research in FRL was observed to be highly influenced by the CSIRO 'culture' of excellence in scientific research. Correspondingly, the empirical research on the goal orientations of scientists in the two laboratory case studies, demonsttates that the meaning of research action is a product of the influences routed through the research 'cultures' extant in the respective laboratory's historic context. The case studies contained in this thesis directly challenge the conttoversial assertion that 'science is universal and culture free'.

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Scientists in laboratories: a comparative study on the organisation of science and goal orientations of scientists in CSIRO (Australia) and CSIR (India) institutions

THIS PAPER ADDRESSES itself to the controversy concerning the effect of values inculcated during the process of scientific training versus the situational context in which scientists perform their occupational role. No support is found for the argument that scientists abandon scientific norms and adopt organizational perspectives and goals once they leave the university. Log linear methods of analysis are applied to data obtained from a sample of Soviet and American immigrant scientists in Israel. The analysis shows that a full and extended scientific socialization (i.e. holding a Ph.D. degree) is a dominant determinant of scientists' value orientations, overriding the influence of the institutional setting in which they do research. The methodological grounds for the contradiction between the conclusions of this and previous studies are discussed and an interpretation of the findings is suggested. A fundamental and long-standing controversy in sociology concerns the question of whether attitudes are shaped by a process of socialization in which shared normative motivations are internalized by individuals, or whether it is the objective conditions of life-situations which determine the nature of evaluations and interests. In the most general terms this is the well-known and still debated "values versus interests" dichotomy (for a recent discussion see Warner, 1978). On a more empirical level, this issue may be approached by examining the relative importance of acquired norms as compared with situational demands and by identifying the main factors associated with the intensity of these influences. In this paper we shall deal with one particular area pertaining to the general controversy delineated above; it concerns the effect of professional socialization as compared with the impact of organizational structure in which occupational roles are performed. More specifically, we examine the relative influence of the process of training for science and of work situations on scientists' orientations. This question has been raised and investigated mostly by British sociologists challenging the "normative approach" in the sociology of science (for example, Mulkay, 1976; Barnes, 1971; Cotgrove and Box, 1970; Sklair, 1973). The main target of their criticism is the "ethos of science" as originally defined by Robert Merton (Merton, 1942). It is claimed that scientists frequently do not behave in accordance with the prescriptions of this normative system, but rather adapt to the rules and requirements of the environment or institutional settings in which they happen to be located (Becker, 1964). For instance, many scientists do not aspire to contribute to general scientific knowledge and accept the restrictions put on publishing the results of their research; some would rather be promoted within their organization than gain recognition by the scientific community; and not all expect to have freedom to choose the subjects of their research projects. Most of these data have been drawn from studies on scientists' attitudes and performance in industry (Cotgrove and Box, 1970; Ellis, 1969; Abrahamson, 1964, Hill, 1974). In principle, the non-academic, industrial setting provides an excellent framework for testing the situational adjustment hypothesis or the "instability" of internalized norms in changing situations (Barnes, 1971). University scientists presumably do not confront this kind of problem since they perform their occupational roles in the same type of institution in which they have been trained. The question is whether scientists in industry, government or business adhere to the values and norms that have been inculcated in the course of their training in universities, or conform with those prescribed by their work organizations, which may be different from and sometimes incompatible with the proclaimed imperatives of science. It should be emphasized that the present study is limited to the normative level, that is, it explores the value-orientations of scientists, not their actual behavior.

Nina Toren

Papers

Scientists' Orientation Toward their Work: The Relative Effect of Socialization Versus Situation