Doctoral Dissertation Research; A New Reward System for Academic Science.

University Of Georgia Research Foundation Inc, Athens GA

Investigators

Abstract

David R. Johnson University of Georgia ABSTRACT: A NEW REWARD SYSTEM IN ACADEMIC SCIENCE? This study addresses the following question: How does a commercially-oriented reward system operate in academic science? Since 1980, the erosion of boundaries between universities and industry has resulted in acceleration in the commercialization of scientific discoveries in the form of patents and companies generated by scientists in the academy. Whereas peer recognition of priority in discovery has traditionally been considered the chief reward for role performance, the ability to commercially-exploit scientific discovery has enabled financial rewards to play an equal and perhaps more powerful role as recognition in the system of rewards in academic science. Because commercialization is predicated on the privatization of knowledge and market-based evaluations of work, new norms of science have also likely emerged that may contradict traditional practices of community-shared, peer-evaluated contributions. Consequently, scientists in academe are exposed to different conceptions of the scientific role, occupational norms, and rewards for scientific conduct. To address this question, sixty interviews with academic scientists will be conducted at four universities. The study employs a theoretical sampling strategy that compares commercially-oriented scientists and non-commercial scientists at public and private universities, evenly divided between scientists who received their PhDs before and after the onset of commercialized academic science. Data will be analyzed to explain contemporary conceptions of the scientific role, motivations to commercialize science, the character of scientific norms, and the operation of the scientific reward system and its consequences. This research builds on existing analyses of the commercialization of academic science by examining the meanings scientists assign, and their motivations to engage in, commercial practices. Moreover, through inclusion of scientists who reject commercialization, it questions assumptions that commercialization is widely accepted or that traditional scientific norms are inoperative. Finally, the study will provide an account of the stability of the academic profession and attributes of universities that constrain and enable scientific achievement.