The experience of powerlessness in organizations

Science is an institution with immense inequality in career attainments. Women and most minorities, as groups, have lower levels of participation, position, productivity, and recognition than do white men. Research in the sociology of science has focused on the degree to which different outcomes have resulted from universalistic and from particularistic processes. In this paper we 1) depict the career attainments of women and minorities in science, 2) consider the meaning and measurement of universalism compared to particularism, 3) analyze the causes of differential attainment with a view to assessing evidence for violations of universalism, 4) propose conditions under which particularism is likely to occur, and 5) consider methodological problems that affect this research.

Scientific Careers: Universalism and Particularism

https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/30849/1/MPRA_paper_30849.pdf

What motivates academic scientists to engage in research commercialization: ‘Gold’, ‘ribbon’ or ‘puzzle’?

The hypothesis of cumulative advantage is widely accepted in the sociology of science, but empirical tests have been few and equivocal. One approach, originated by Allison and Stewart (1974), is to see whether inequality of productivity and recognition increases as a cohort of scientists ages. This paper extends their work by examining true cohorts of biochemists and chemists rather than synthetic cohorts. Increasing inequality is observed for counts of publications but not for counts of citations to all previous publications. It is also shown that a mathematical model of cumulative advantage does not imply increasing inequality. When the model is modified to allow for heterogeneity in the rate of cumulative advantage, however, increasing inequality is implied.

Cumulative Advantage and Inequality in Science

An earlier study found that while a scientist's productivity does not affect the prestige of the academic position obtained, the prestige of the position does affect later productivity. In this paper consideration of contextual effects is broadened to include differing organizational contexts of scientific employment. Chances of obtaining employment in a particular context are not strongly affected by productivity. Once employment is obtained in a specific context, individual levels of productivity soon conform to characteristics of that context. These results do not support the "idea that scientists are allocated to organizational contexts on the basis of their scientific contributions. Past research indicating that the most productive scientists are recruited to academic locations may have confused the cause of a scientist working in a given context with the effect of working in that context.

Stephen Cotgrove

Papers

The Reward System in British and American Science

Education and Occupation

Technical education and social change

Alienation and automation.

The sociology of science and technology.