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Contradiction, convergence and the
knowledge economy: the confluence of
academic and commercial biotechnology
Steven Peter Vallas1and Daniel Lee Kleinman2
1
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
2
Department of Rural Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA
Correspondence: svallas@gmu.edu
Efforts to understand the structure of the emerging knowledge economy have paid
particular attention to the shifting boundary between academic and commercial
(for-profit) research, especially in life sciences. Yet, empirical studies have tended
to adopt a segmented approach, focusing on either industry or the academy,
thus obscuring the increasingly interwoven nature of these two domains. In this
paper, we explore the changing organizational logics that govern both academic
and corporate science, using interview data gathered from two important clusters
of the biotechnology industry: Route 128 in Massachusetts and the San Francisco
Bay area. These data, while provisional, lead us to suggest that cultural traffic
between university and commercial science has increased, blurring the boundary
between them and generating a new and often contradictory knowledge
regime, the product of a growing confluence of organizational logics that had pre-
viously been distinct. The emergence of this regime, which conforms to Stark’s
(2001) notion of ‘heterarchy’, holds important implications for prevailing theories
of university–industry relations and of organizational change as well.
Keywords: knowledge based economy, organizational change, university–
industry relations, science
JEL classification: L0 industrial organization, L1 market structure, firm strategy,
market performance
1. Introduction
In recent years, scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to the nature and
functioning of the knowledge economy (Brint, 2001; Powell and Snellman, 2004).
One particularly important aspect of this literature is centred on the changing
relation between the university and the marketplace, which poses far-reaching
#The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics.
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Socio-Economic Review (2007) 1–29 doi:10.1093/ser/mwl035
Socio-Economic Review Advance Access published May 22, 2007
questions about the nature of knowledge production within the United States. In
much of this discussion, life sciences have provided an especially significant
terrain, not only because of scientific developments within medical and agricul-
tural biotechnology but also due to sustained interest on the part of pharma-
ceutical firms, venture capitalists and entrepreneurial ventures promoted by
prominent scientists themselves. Analysts have viewed these developments as
posing novel challenges, in that they threaten to disrupt longstanding distinctions
that scientists have drawn between basic and applied research, public and private
knowledge and, at the most general level, between the university and the market-
place itself (Gieryn, 1983; Shapin, 1994).
1
This blurring of the boundary between previously distinct institutional domains
has given rise to much debate and uncertainty. Some analysts have sharply criticized
the growth of university–industry relations, viewing the institutional logics of
science and corporate research as fundamentally incompatible (Heller, 1998;
Shenk, 1999; Slaughter and Leslie, 1997; Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004). The argu-
ment here, variously expressed, is that the profit imperative threatens to erode the
freedom and autonomy of scientific inquiry, erect institutional constraints
(through patenting and licensing conventions) to the flow of knowledge and infor-
mation and allow pressures to engage in revenue generation to shape the questions
that researchers are likely to pursue (AAUP, 1983; Kleinman and Kloppenburg,
1988; Hart, 1989; Louis and Anderson, 1998; Shenk, 1999; Hackett, 2001; Bok,
2003). By contrast, other scholars have argued that these concerns misconstrue
newly emergent structures of knowledge production, whether the latter are
viewed in terms of a new ‘mode of knowledge production’ (Gibbons et al.,
1994), a ‘triple helix’ linking government, the academy and industry (Etzkowitz
and Webster, 1998) or collaborative networks that link firms, academic scientists,
venture capitalists, medical institutions and government agencies (Powell et al.,
1996; Powell and Owen-Smith, 1998, 2002, Owen-Smith and Powell, 2001).
These debates have provoked a surge of interest in the commercialization of
science, the changing relation between university and industry more generally
and the consequences that ensue when universities adopt an entrepreneurial
orientation towards scientific research (Slaughter and Rhoades, 1993, 2004;
Slaughter and Leslie, 1997; Owen-Smith, 2003; Murray and Stern, 2006).
Despite this outpouring of discussion and debate, understanding of the ‘new
1
Analysts commonly point to the passage of the 1980 Patent and Trademark Amendment Act (also
known as the Bayh– Dole Act), which enabled universities to patent the results of federally funded
research, changes in federal fiscal policy which often forced academic institutions to generate
revenues on their own account, and commercially valuable developments within the life sciences
themselves, which were successfully brought to market by the first generation biotechnology
companies. For a fuller discussion, see Slaughter and Leslie (1997), Powell et al. (1996) and
Owen-Smith and Powell (2001).
Page 2 of 29 S. P. Vallas and D. L. Kleinman
knowledge economy’ has been hampered in several respects. First, much of the
existing research has focused one-sidedly on questions involving intellectual
property rights (patents, licensing conventions, participation in entrepreneurial
start-ups, etc.). Important though such issues may be, studies in this vein have
largely neglected the informal cultural codes and practices that underlie intellec-
tual property conventions and that shape the nature of scientists’ work situa-
tions.
2
Second, the bulk of the literature has adopted a segmented approach
towards the university–industry relation, typically focusing on the conduct of
science on either side of this boundary, but only rarely on both. This has made
it difficult to grasp the interactions between academic and commercial entities,
the cultural ‘traffic’ that has unfolded apace with the mobility of scientists, and
the co-evolution that may well ensue. Finally, few of the existing studies have
sought to understand the ways in which the shifting of institutional boundaries
is experienced and conceivably shaped by scientists themselves (for exceptions,
see Owen-Smith and Powell, 2001; Murray, 2006).
The present paper seeks to move beyond these limitations. It builds on previous
theoretical work in which we speculated about some of the ways in which the nor-
mative codes and practices of industry and the academy have empirically com-
bined, yielding structures of knowledge production that assume novel and
contradictory forms (Kleinman and Vallas, 2001). Seeking to develop a theory of
what we termed ‘asymmetrical convergence’, our previous efforts operated at a
high level of abstraction, relying as they did on the limited body of knowledge
that existed on the commingling of normative codes. In the present paper, we
seek to ground our theoretical work empirically, using interview data on norms
and practices found among a sample scientific personnel (N¼95) employed
within two important clusters of biotechnology research: the Route 128/
Cambridge area in Massachusetts and the San Francisco Bay area adjacent to
Silicon Valley. It should be made clear that our aim is not to test a set of hypotheses,
but rather to engage in the work of theory (re)construction, using qualitative data
to develop a model of the changes currently impinging on the codes and practices
that govern life science research within both academic and corporate contexts.
3
We begin by sketching several competing understandings of the fate of know-
ledge work in both university and commercial establishments. We then develop a
critique of existing distinctions between basic and applied research, academic and
corporate science, and private and public science. Addressing the work situations
2
Indeed, recent studies (Walsh et al., 2003; Walsh et al., 2005) report that few scientists are cognizant of
patenting as an imperative and few experience patenting as a constraint on the nature of their work.
3
Following Burawoy’s 1998 ‘extended case’ method, we use our data as a means of highlighting points
of vulnerability within existing theory, a useful step in the formation of alternative conceptions of the
institutional processes actually underway.
Contradiction, convergence and the knowledge economy Page 3 of 29
of university and commercial scientists, we focus on two aspects of laboratory life:
the organizational structures that govern the production of scientific knowledge
and the social relations that obtain among scientists themselves. Although our
data are provisional, they begin to suggest that there has indeed been a confluence
of normative constructs drawn from either side of the university–industry divide.
The discovery-oriented logic traditionally found within the academy has increa-
singly been combined with entrepreneurial practices originating in the
marketplace, even as the entrepreneurial, profit-driven logic of commercial lab-
oratories has accommodated academic or collegial norms. We view the result
as giving way to a single, increasingly interconnected scientific field—in Stark’s
(2001) terms, a ‘heterarchy’—marked by multiple anomalies, tensions and
ironies (Dubinskas, 1988; Hackett, 2005). These developments, we conclude,
have significant bearing not only on current debates about the structure of know-
ledge production in the United States, but also on theoretical models of insti-
tutional change more broadly (Schneiberg and Clemens, 2006).
2. Understanding the new knowledge regimes
In the early 1980s, amid rising concern for US economic competitiveness, the
public role of academic scientific research (initially shaped during the years
immediately following World War II) began to shift in subtle, yet significant,
ways. Once viewed as a relatively autonomous realm,
4
university research was
increasingly construed as a source of economic and technological innovation.
Universities, endowed with new-found powers of patenting and intellectual prop-
erty, were encouraged to play a central role in the process of capital accumulation.
Amid rising fiscal constraints on public spending, and with social entitlements
placing limits on public support for higher education, university administrators
looked to market-based sources for much-needed material support and legitimacy.
The result, many suggested, involved a historically significant shift in the very logic
that traditionally informed university research, especially as faculties engaged in
the founding of biotechnology start-up firms and otherwise sought to profit
from the knowledge they produced (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997; Powell and Owen-
Smith, 1998; Owen-Smith and Powell, 2001; Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004).
Early research on university–industry relationships (UIRs) focused on the
apparent erosion of traditional academic norms that accompanied the increase
in formal relationships between academic scientists and biotechnology firms
(e.g. Blumenthal et al., 1986). Much of this literature voiced concern that
4
While many science policymakers and scientists believed academic research to be substantially
independent from the world of commerce and other pressures, the idea of an autonomous
university was always more myth than reality (see Kleinman and Vallas, 2001; Kleinman, 2003).
Page 4 of 29 S. P. Vallas and D. L. Kleinman
faculty start-up firms, licensing arrangements and patent provisions posed a
salient threat to the free flow of knowledge and the autonomy of scientific
research (e.g. Shenk, 1999). Analysts often predicted that UIRs would distort
scientific priorities, constrain scientists’ selection of topics and methods for
research, skew graduate education towards commercial concern, and erect bar-
riers to the sort of cooperation, collaboration and sharing of information and
resources on which science has historically relied (e.g. Hackett, 2001). This critical
perspective was premised on the presumed incompatibility of the scientific logic
of objective, discovery-oriented research, on the one hand, and the market-driven
logic of financial pursuits, on the other.
In response to this approach, other less normatively critical perspectives
emerged, which called for more complex accounts of the structural changes
underway. Perhaps the most systematically developed version of this second
approach has been advanced by Powell and his colleagues (see Powell, et al.,
1996; Powell and Owen-Smith, 1998, 2002; Owen-Smith and Powell, 2001),
who have used network theory to understand the rise of new institutional struc-
tures that depart from previous organizational forms. In this view, the uncer-
tainty and dynamism that characterize science-intensive industries have
deterred firms from relying on in-house research and development staffs, given
the risks and rigidities such a strategy entails. What has, therefore, developed is
a new ecology of collaborative networks that link small start-up firms, venture
capitalists, large corporations, university-based scientists and government
agencies, which increasingly collaborate on particular initiatives, licensing agree-
ments and partnerships of various sorts. Implied here is an argument that the
logics of science and industry are by no means incompatible; to the contrary, ‘aca-
demic and commercial life scientists are now members of a single technological
community’ (Powell and Owen-Smith, 2002, p. 107) whose organizing principles
have grown more varied and dynamic than critics of commercialization have
claimed (Powell et al., 2005).
Empirical efforts to apply these conflicting images of academic and corporate
science have grown rapidly during the last two decades (Dubinskas, 1988;
Etzkowitz, 1998; Hackett, 2001, 2005; Owen-Smith, 2003; Stuart and Ding,
2006). Yet these efforts have been limited in several respects. First, reflecting
the high degree of specialization that informs research on universities and corpor-
ations, analysts have often focused on either academic environments or corporate
laboratories. Such research designs have approached these two domains in iso-
lation from one another, rendering it difficult to capture the ‘cultural traffic’
that occurs when normative codes and practices begin to migrate across pre-
viously distinct institutional domains. The result has impeded our understanding
of the relationships that unfold between academic and corporate science as these
previously distinct domains increasingly co-evolve.
Contradiction, convergence and the knowledge economy Page 5 of 29
Theoretical assumptions have also taken their toll. Because much of the debate
over the commercialization of science has emphasized the potentially negative
effects that flow from intellectual property concerns, the ensuing literature has
focused narrowly on contractual agreements, patenting constraints and formal
linkages and partnerships between academic and commercial organizations
(Sampat, 2005; Murray and Stern, 2006). Yet, arguably, the formal trappings of
intellectual property regimes in fact constitute an expression of a deeper,
cultural-ideological process that has increasingly engulfed life sciences. The con-
ceptual tools of institutionalist theory are quite useful here. In effect, by empha-
sizing the pressures that flow from contracts, patenting and licensing provisions,
researchers have focused solely on what DiMaggio and Powell (1983) and Powell
(1991) have termed coercive isomorphism—influences that stem from legal and
contractual controls. As a result, they have largely neglected the other forms of
isomorphism that institutional theory detects, such as normative pressures (as
when the mobility of scientific personnel fosters the diffusion of codes and prac-
tices across organizational lines) and mimetic ones (in which organizations
engage in legitimacy-seeking behaviour by emulating high prestige arrange-
ments). In other words, underlying the direct, formal legal linkages that UIR theo-
rists have stressed may well be found a deeper process, involving changes in
normative codes and practices quite apart from formal, contractual ties.
Yet, if institutionalist accounts can deepen our understanding of the changes
impinging on academic and corporate organizations, they also contain important
limitations of their own (Schneiberg and Clemens, 2006). Although institutional
theorists have sought to move beyond the assumptions of stasis and conformity
that characterized early statements (Jepperson, 1991; Davis et al., 1994; Scott
et al., 2000), the tendency has been to view institutional change as a linear histori-
cal process in which a once-dominant logic comes under attack and is subject to
critique (‘de-institutionalized’), until an entirely new alternative arises in its place
(Davis et al., 1994; Scott et al., 2000). Arguably, such an approach oversimplifies
the process of institutional change, in that it fails to capture situations in which
multiple organizational logics coincide, yielding tendencies towards hybridity and
contradiction that generate ongoing tension, conflict and internal debate
(Dubinskas, 1988; Vallas, 2003; Murray, 2006). Indeed, Stark (2001) has suggested
that the innovation and creativity that new organizations need often rest on the
coexistence of precisely such conflicting logics—a state that prompts him to
speak of ‘heterarchy’ as a nascent organizational form.
With these considerations in mind, we introduced an outline of a theory of the
new regimes emerging within science-intensive fields, viewing these regimes as
the outcome of what we termed ‘asymmetrical convergence’ (Kleinman and
Vallas, 2001). A central contention of our approach is that the boundary
between previously distinct institutional domains has begun to collapse, with
Page 6 of 29 S. P. Vallas and D. L. Kleinman
normative codes and practices commingling in novel and often anomalous ways.
To be sure, these developments are not entirely new: American universities have
long been tied to practical purposes, and corporate laboratories (most notably,
Bell Labs) have long made accommodations to scientists’ expectations
(Kleinman, 2003). Yet what is new is the emergence of a broad structural
trend, partly induced by new state policies and partly by substantive develop-
ments within science itself, which has encouraged the confluence or co-evolution
of previously separate organizational fields. The growth of small start-up firms
that reflect the academic origins of their founders; the spread of novel alliances
between corporations and university departments; the growth of collaborative
publications linking scientists in distinct organizational settings; the increasing
citation of work conducted in corporate laboratories; the growing mobility
between academia and industry, with the latter recruiting young PhD’s from
the most prestigious universities—all of these are but a few of the signs that
industry and academia have begun to co-evolve in new and distinctive ways.
As a result of these developments, we argue that a two-way cultural traffic is
growing, in which market pressures and entrepreneurial practices increasingly
pervade academia, even as university-like codes and practices are adopted by
science-intensive firms. In speaking of a confluence of norms within corporate
and academic contexts, we do not mean to suggest that as codes and practices
move across the academic/industry divide, they are simply cut and pasted unal-
tered. Instead, they are often modified to comport with aspects of the established
realm into which they move (Murray, 2006). Thus, academic scientists adopt
entrepreneurial orientations where the currency at stake—academic as well as
economic capital—often comports uneasily with traditional, discovery-oriented
modes of inquiry. And on the commercial side, concern for collegiality and for
contributions to ‘basic’ knowledge is increasingly valued, but largely as a
means of attracting and motivating both scientists and investors, not as an end
in itself. In private sector science, the free flow of ideas—a deeply held academic
ideal—is promoted, but within constraints and always in the service of profit.
The result is an increased blurring of relatively distinct institutional domains,
where an inherently contradictory, tension-laden knowledge regime takes root,
however unevenly, on both sides of the institutional divide. We describe this
process as one of ‘convergence’ not because the two institutional spheres are
increasingly indistinguishable, but because each realm begins to manifest parallel
tensions and contradictions and because the two domains begin to function as
part of a single knowledge regime. We characterize the process as ‘asymmetrical’
because, in the last instance, the values of neo-liberal capitalism have an overarch-
ing impact on how, why and where corporate and academic cultures are drawn on
and mixed (Harvey, 2005). Academic norms are adopted in firms in the service of
corporate profits, and universities adopt corporate practices most frequently in
Contradiction, convergence and the knowledge economy Page 7 of 29
the interest of improving the legitimacy they enjoy, whether in the public’s mind
or in the market for prestige within higher education.
3. Methods and data
Seeking to ground these theoretical formulations in the work situations of life
scientists, we designed and conducted a qualitative study of the normative and
organizational patterns that obtain among a sample of life scientists employed
in both corporate and academic laboratories.
Undertaken between the fall of 2001 and the summer of 2002, the study relies
on interview data with scientists, administrators and support personnel within
both university and corporate contexts. Approximately half of our interviews
were with academic respondents employed at six prominent research
universities—three of which were located in the San Francisco Bay/Silicon
Valley Area and three that were in the Route 128/Boston region. All of the
university personnel we interviewed conduct broadly similar work in
biotechnology-related life sciences, chiefly addressing medical as opposed to agri-
cultural questions. The other half of our respondents came from 14 dedicated
biotechnology firms evenly drawn from the same two geographic regions. Our
selection of these two locales was largely guided by the fact that they have the
highest concentrations of biotechnology firms in the United States.
On the industry side, we used both industry directories and snowball sampling
methods to construct a size-stratified sample of biotech companies that included
small start-up firms as well as large, highly prominent biotech corporations. We
then used quota sampling methods to represent the full array of positions ordi-
narily found within both university settings and biotech firms. At the universities,
we interviewed administrators, professors of all ranks, postdoctoral fellows,
graduate students and technicians; at the corporations, interviews were con-
ducted with research directors, managers, PhD scientists who led research
groups, junior scientists, research associates and technicians. Interviews were
semi-structured and ranged between 45 and 90 minutes in length. A second
wave of interviews was conducted to follow up issues that arose during our
initial wave of interviewing and to lend greater depth to our understanding of
the institutions in our sample. Note that, although our interviews sought to retro-
spectively tap into processes of organizational change, our research rests on a
cross-sectional research design and thus cannot directly capture the ongoing
co-evolution of university and commercial science. Our research should therefore
be read as part of a necessarily larger effort to grasp the growing interdependence
or confluence of previously distinct institutional domains.
In the following analysis, we focus on two interrelated dimensions of know-
ledge production: the organizational structures that govern scientific research
Page 8 of 29 S. P. Vallas and D. L. Kleinman
and the social relations established among research personnel (the vertical and
the horizontal division of labour). The questions we pose concern the ways in
which normative codes and practices in university settings and commercial labo-
ratories have changed over time, deviating from the models that have existed in
the past.
4. Organizational structures and control of scientific research
4.1 Academic laboratories
The dominant conception of the workplace in academic science has been one in
which individual scientists have sovereign control of their research agendas and
daily practices. This view (a kind of interpellation of the individual scientist) is
found in the mythmaking accounts of analysts such as Merton (1973) and
Polanyi (1962). It is found in science textbooks (Rudolph, 2002), policy docu-
ments (Lederman, 1991) and hagiographic histories. Critics of UIRs often
naively accept this portrait, claiming only that direct UIRs pose threats to its
continued viability (Kleinman and Vallas, 2001).
When asked about the distinction between their own situations and those of
corporate scientists, our academic respondents were at pains to affirm the tra-
ditional conception of their autonomous position as independent scientists.
These scientists insisted that, in contrast to industry scientists, they retain near-
complete control over the selection of research topics, the day-to-day operation
of their laboratories and, for more junior scientists, their own work practices.
5
Yet, even as they voiced such beliefs, our respondents also reported evidence of
normative and organizational influences that quite clearly tend to constrain, in
subtle yet important ways, the choices that academic scientists would likely to
make. Such influences often involved shifting reward structures, changing
funding imperatives and normative pressures emerging among scientists
themselves.
As is the case among university scientists more generally, our respondents did
have experience with direct, formal ties with corporate, for-profit organizations,
much as analysts of UIRs have stressed. Most common were joint ventures or
exclusive licensing agreements between departments and companies—precisely,
the sort of entanglements that have attracted so much debate. Yet such experi-
ences seemed to hold limited significance, for reasons that were two-fold. First,
rather than inducing universities to adopt corporate norms, such arrangements
5
Typical statements included comments such as these: ‘Well, I’m the person in charge of the lab and
my intellectual interests are the overriding concern’ and ‘The general questions are completely up to
me’.
Contradiction, convergence and the knowledge economy Page 9 of 29
often seemed to provoke or inflame conflict and resentment on both sides.
6
And
second, as is the case among university scientists more generally, only a small
minority of these academic scientists was actively engaged in start-ups, the
pursuit of patents, consultant arrangements or other commercial endeavours.
In recounting instances of such activities as direct partnerships with biotech
firms, respondents often described episodes that stretched one or two decades
backward in time.
In spite of the relative paucity of such formal, direct relations with industry,
the academic departments in our study have quite clearly encountered increasing
pressures to conform to organizational logics that have been traditionally associa-
ted with commercial enterprises. Said the dean of sciences at one prestigious
Massachusetts university:
We are not given the privilege any longer of doing research just because
we’re curious about an answer... Because nowadays I think it’s absolu-
tely critical that we justify the use of taxpayer money based upon the
fact that it has some potential to have impact on people. I don’t
know whether or not the committees that are evaluating people for
promotion and tenure are now beginning to understand that they
must take into consideration numbers of patents, numbers of compa-
nies, the commercialization and the impact of that on the economy of
the area. But I’m assuming that if we’re going to encourage that, which I
know we are, that that will start to become part of the equation, if it
isn’t already.
Another dean was even more forthright. Describing institutional changes at his
university, he invoked an industrial metaphor to describe his conception of the
role of the academy within the knowledge economy:
Right now as a university we’re going through a fairly [major] search
and re-evaluation of who we are and what we do, and how well we’re
doing it in view of budget cuts, how we should react, and what I’ve
tried to convince my colleagues is that it would be reasonable to
think of a university as a manufacturer of capital goods. We manufacture
minds, ideas, patents in some cases, and these are the capital goods that
industries are built around.
6
Thus at one Bay Area university, graduate students in molecular biology were materially supported by
a biotech firm interested in commercializing the results of their research. When, on the eve of one
student’s dissertation defence, the firm suddenly insisted that faculty advisors sign broad
non-disclosure agreements, a bitter conflict unfolded between the university and the firm, leading
many faculty members to become highly critical of corporate partnerships for several years to come.
Page 10 of 29 S. P. Vallas and D. L. Kleinman
Other administrators sometimes spoke of beginning to ‘focus on research areas
for investing’, much as venture capitalists might. Ironically, one administrator
insisted that universities have remained sharply different from corporations,
but the model he used—one that likened faculty to a board of directors over-
seeing university administrators—was itself drawn from the corporate world.
These kinds of remarks indicate that academic institutions have indeed moved
to adopt codes and practices that increasingly draw from a logic of commerce
and capital accumulation.
Despite describing a work environment in which they were fundamentally
autonomous, these scientists often acknowledged that they increasingly faced
economic pressures, even if these were not directly related to the commercializa-
tion of academia. Said one academic scientist, shrugging his shoulders at our
questions:
Even if you have tenure, in order to keep your lab functional, you have
to keep the publications and grants coming in, so it’s never completely
free. And to get the grants you have to work on stuff which is con-
sidered fundable.
Another academic scientist, wryly commenting on the pressures he encountered
to conform to scientific fashions and trends, spoke of ensuring that his research
proposals were sufficiently ‘buzz-word compliant’, the better to leverage their
chances of success. Many of our respondents lamented the increased pressure
and the sheer crush of time as they sought to accommodate the growing
demand to engage in fundraising alongside their various other duties.
Such an escalation of pressure to engage in revenue generation was apparent to
the graduate students in our sample and was also cited by many of our respon-
dents as a major reason why they left academia in the first place. Many graduate
students seemed highly reluctant to shoulder the entrepreneurial burdens their
faculty mentors encountered and seemed prone to factor them into their
career decisions. Thus, as one West Coast graduate student noted:
I don’t think I could lead a lab ...I mean, if you’re a P.I. and you can’t
get funding, then you can’t pay your graduate students and you can’t
pay the people relying on you. I think maybe in industry I could hope-
fully get into a position where I wouldn’t have to be in such authority.
Similar inclinations emerged among several of our industrial scientists, who had
grown disenchanted with the pressure to generate revenue and elected to leave
desirable academic positions in favour of commercial employment. These scien-
tists felt compelled to work for corporations—ironically enough, precisely to
escape the entrepreneurial pressures they encountered within the academy.
Contradiction, convergence and the knowledge economy Page 11 of 29
In these interviews, we begin to sense a ratcheting up of the organizational
inducements faced by academic scientists, who are increasingly encouraged to
select topics and methods that are attuned to funding imperatives. So intense
are these pressures that scientists sometimes find it desirable to seek out research
opportunities in industry, since organizational arrangements here make collective
provisions for entrepreneurial activity that insulate scientists from the need to
concern themselves directly with the generation of revenue.
4.2 Commercial science
The stereotypical view of scientific research in corporate settings has tradition-
ally held that scientific projects in this domain are normally conceived,
designed and conducted along lines envisioned by corporate managers (see
Marcson, 1960; Kornhauser, 1962; Dubinskas, 1988). Several of our academic
respondents invoked this stereotype, as when one senior scientist referred to
biotechnology firms as mere ‘data mills’. A scientist in a middle-sized firm
in Boston was all too familiar with this view, which he characterized as:
‘Turn the crank, let’s, you know, make a molecule but not care about what
we’re understanding’.
There is an element of truth in this representation. Indeed, a few of the
managers we interviewed had moved to focus their research activities more
tightly on the discovery of saleable products than their predecessors had done.
Yet, for the most part, with important cross-firm variation, the organizational
culture and practices we unearthed drew freely from academic norms and
conventions, suggesting that the character of scientific research and profit
imperatives of corporate goals were much more loosely coupled than academics
have presumed.
At some of the biotech firms we studied, for example, one would be hard-
pressed to distinguish organizational routines from those found within academic
laboratories. This was especially clear at one large commercial enterprise in the
Bay Area. One scientist described the culture of research at this firm:
We’re more basic research focused, where we can either work on what is
a drug candidate, a therapeutic problem [with obvious commercial
value] or you can work on just about anything else provided it will
be published in Science or Nature.... If you’re doing that kind of gla-
morous, visibly recognized science, it doesn’t matter what it is because
something we also care about is our reputation within the scientific
community for doing cutting edge research. And you’re supported in
doing that. So I feel the freedom to say, you know, this is really hot
Page 12 of 29 S. P. Vallas and D. L. Kleinman
and we really need to study this. No it’s not a drug, but it’s something
important ...
In this case, the firm provides lavish support for basic research, despite the com-
mercial goals the firm must achieve.
Not surprisingly, we did encounter firms in which academic norms were more
fully subordinated to commercial imperatives and where scientists needed to gain
formal authorization from managers and directors of science before embarking
on a given avenue of research. Yet even within these settings, several considera-
tions allowed scientists to preserve a substantial degree of autonomy. First,
although the general direction of research was defined by management, concrete
lines of research were typically proposed by bench scientists. This meant that in
practice, PhD scientists often led projects which they themselves had proposed.
Second, at several firms, respondents reported having substantial freedom to
pursue exploratory research of their own choosing, up until the point at which
the research became expensive; only then would formal authorization be
required. Such an arrangement preserved an important zone of autonomy for
scientists employed at commercial laboratories.
Third, the managers we interviewed often seemed quite conscious of the need
to accord such autonomy to their research scientists and, for this reason, applied
the firm’s policies in a flexible manner that allowed for ample give and take.
Often, the science directors at these firms played a role that was analogous to
that of a senior faculty member leading a large laboratory or research institute.
Reflecting this role, several respondents spoke of their efforts to maintain an
ongoing dialogue between bench scientists and themselves as to which lines of
research to pursue. At times, science directors spoke of forming common cause
with bench scientists, seeking support from the company’s executives for their
jointly formed ideas. In such cases, explained the science director at a larger
Boston firm, ‘we try to convince [the CEO] of the validity of looking into a par-
ticular technology or a particular drug or something like that. We try to educate
[the CEO] and everyone about what would be good, something good to look at’.
It is important to acknowledge that none of the commercial firms we studied
closely conformed to the academic ideal of scientist autonomy and that there was
significant variation in the control that firms allowed their scientists. Still, at
many of our firms, managers had made a determined effort to accommodate aca-
demic traditions, in keeping with the expectations of their scientists. Indeed, our
private sector scientists were often encouraged to maintain an occupational iden-
tity as professional scientists—a matter discussed further below.
Thus far, our analysis has begun to suggest a number of important points con-
cerning the social organization of scientific work in university and commercial
contexts. To begin with, the normative codes and practices in which academic
Contradiction, convergence and the knowledge economy Page 13 of 29
science takes place have apparently begun to acquire an increasingly overt entre-
preneurial cast even in the absence of licensing or patenting conventions or other
manifestations of commercial activity. At the same time, for their part, corporate
laboratories have made significant accommodations to academic norms, thus
appealing to university-based conventions in addition to their customary
concern for profitability as such. Thus, despite long-standing conceptions of uni-
versity and commercial science as institutionally distinct, our interview data
begin to suggest an increasing blurring of the boundary between academia and
industry, although in ways that are fraught with irony and contradiction. As a
number of our respondents themselves observed, the traditional conception of
‘separate worlds’ seems to have less and less purchase on the ways in which
biological science actually operates today.
5. Social relations among research personnel
A second aspect of great interest concerns the social relations established among
research personnel themselves. This dimension commands particular attention,
given the significance of occupationally rooted norms and practices for the
flow of strategic knowledge, resources and techniques within organizations
seeking to maintain a culture of innovation (e.g. Saxenian, 1994; Barley, 1996;
Orr, 1996; Kleinman, 2003). Since universities have traditionally been regarded
as the bearers of the collegial ideal, we ask: How do social relations among aca-
demic and corporate scientists compare? In what ways, if any, are the processes
of asymmetrical convergence altering social relations in the university and indus-
try? And how do social relations within these laboratories affect the distribution
of knowledge among scientists themselves?
5.1 Collegial relations versus status competition in the academy
One of the key points of concern registered by scholars studying UIRs is that the
increasing emphasis on the protection of intellectual property threatens to erect
increasingly formidable barriers to the free flow of information and resources that
are needed for cutting-edge research. Our data speak to these concerns, yet they
suggest that analysts have at least partly mischaracterized the nature of such con-
straints: barriers to the flow of information and mutual support are plainly appar-
ent among the academic scientists in our sample, yet such constraints seem only
weakly related to any licensing or patenting arrangements or to the policies of
technology transfer offices (Kleinman, 2003). Indeed, many of our respondents
could not be bothered to patent their research findings, and only a minority
was personally involved in direct commercial ventures of any sort. Rather, the
major constraints on the sharing of information and materials that we observed
Page 14 of 29 S. P. Vallas and D. L. Kleinman
stem from more subtle, indirect changes in the normative context in which
academic science is conceived and conducted.
In contrast to the traditional, idealized conception of academic collegiality, the
university scientists we interviewed only rarely spoke of engaging in collaborative
research on the basis of shared intellectual interests and concerns. Rather,
they most often exhibited an instrumental orientation towards collegial
interaction—a view in which collaboration was defined as a means by which to
gain access to information, materials or technical expertise (Vallas et al., 2003).
Even more noteworthy were the repeated statements we heard in which respon-
dents seemed increasingly wary of sharing information about their research, out
of manifest fear that doing so might harm their competitive position.
Evidence of an instrumental view of collaborative work emerged at several
points in our interviews. Noted one respondent, an assistant professor:
If you’re interested in some question and somebody has a reagent or a
mouse model or animal model which might be very useful for you, and
you have that, then you collaborate with them to get [the information
or research material you need].
Again, an associate professor described collaborative work as largely lacking in
intellectual content: ‘we sort of exchange reagents and so forth ... but it’s not,
there’s not ... a whole lot of research done in the lab that is sort of directly
feeding the collaboration ...’. Ironically, some of these scientists expressed frus-
tration with such an instrumental approach towards collaborative work and saw
the corporate laboratories as more conducive to genuine intellectual collabora-
tion. Thus one scientist at a biotech firm told us that ‘in a company, there’s
much more of a team spirit and excitement about getting something done.
So you can put pieces together in ways to accomplish things that could never
be done in an academic lab’.
A second point that emerged in our interviews centres on the increasing wari-
ness or reluctance academic scientists displayed when it came to sharing their
knowledge and resources with colleagues. To be sure, our interviews do
provide evidence of scientists who remain deeply committed to the Mertonian
norm of scientific communism. Yet, far more common were expressions of
growing secrecy among academic scientists. One scientist who laments the
growing secrecy he sees among his colleagues expressed a view that is again
fairly close to our own:
That’s becoming an increasingly serious problem in science that, that
people are really not sharing things the way they used to, and it’s
becoming more competitive .... A lot of people you know would
claim that this has to do with closer interactions with companies and
Contradiction, convergence and the knowledge economy Page 15 of 29
financial interests and everything and I don’t believe that ....It’s
mostly self-protective and it doesn’t have to do with financial interests.
It has to do with credit, advancement, grants, prestige, all those things
and that’s why I think the simple answer is that the field has become
highly competitive.
In the same vein, a senior scientist on the West Coast observed that
The information flow is less free [now] in the sense that if I have four
projects going on in the lab and I’m working with a particular collabo-
rator on one of them, I’m not going to tell [him] about the other three.
The reason for that is really just competition... I suppose that raises
some issues about free flow of scientific information, but I don’t
really think it’s an issue because that information gets recorded publicly
anyway when you’re ready.
These interviews repeatedly suggest that the infusion of an entrepreneurial ethos
in academic science is, indeed, increasing the number of barriers that impede the
flow of information, but in ways that involve broad, normative shifts in the
culture of academic science that cannot be attributed to the formal trappings
of intellectual property. Instead, it is sharpening competition for professional dis-
tinction, combined with the entrepreneurial ethos driven by the scramble for
scarce dollars, which has yielded increasingly potent barriers to the sharing of know-
ledge among scientists in the same or similar fields.
In this respect, our results mirror findings reported in two recent studies of
information sharing among life scientists (Marshall, 1997, p. 525; Campbell et al.,
2002). These studies, combined with the data reported here, begin to suggest
that if the commercialization of science impedes the flow of information—
and we believe it does—this effect is a mediated one that operates through subtle
change in academic culture and is not directly the result of formal– legal constraints.
5.2 Collegial relations and information sharing in biotech firms
In contrast to the circumstances we found in academic biology, the biotech firms
we studied ironically seemed to provide a buffer against sharp status competition,
thereby managing to adhere more closely to the collegial, academic ideal than did
universities themselves. Commonly, the companies we studied were able to
engender a cooperative set of social relations among their research personnel
that stressed the value of collaboration and the sharing of information and tech-
niques across different ranks and departments within the firm. As noted above,
work processes were generally cooperative and infused with a team ethos that
enabled information and other resources to flow quite openly within the firm.
Page 16 of 29 S. P. Vallas and D. L. Kleinman
Workers in the commercial laboratories offered a variety of explanations for this
culture of cooperation and information-sharing. Some pointed to a specific man-
agerial effort, loosely based on the precepts of knowledge management and the
need for a culture of enquiry generally (Kunda, 1992). In keeping with this
view, one human resources director explained that the company sought to encou-
rage communication by fostering an informal and relaxed setting:
The open environment we provide is one that provides for collabor-
ation. [In] the hallways and the bathrooms, wherever you are, [we]
try to get people to engage in conversation, talk out ideas, and it’s a
very open environment that way. I mean our president definitely
encourages that. It’s a fairly informal environment. We don’t wear
ties, we don’t get all dressed up or anything. It’s because it is a
working environment and so we try to really encourage comfortable
conversation between people.
A manager at another company also spoke of fostering a culture of cooperation
and interdependence, seeing shared intellectual efforts as important for the effec-
tive use of the firm’s talent:
Well, we do things to try to enhance [information sharing.]... We have
monthly research meetings which are not to present data but to present
plans for research, to organize research going forward .... Even in the
new facility we have areas that we call collaborative areas which are just
off the lab. People can go and sit down and talk about projects or ...
read, or discuss. It’s important because everybody needs to know
what is going on in other projects so that there’s not redundancy.
So well established was this pattern of collaborative relations that, for many of our
industry scientists, this feature of their work situations provided a marked con-
trast with what they had previously encountered in the university setting. Indeed,
several scientists at biotech firms reported that their decisions to work in industry
instead of academia stemmed precisely from this desire for teamwork and from
their feelings of isolation in academia. For their part, human resource managers
and science directors often indicated that such openness was not an end in itself,
but reflected their recognition that permitting—even promoting—openness
within firms not only enhanced the work experience of the scientists but also
facilitated the realization of corporate goals (e.g. in the need to avoid
‘redundancy’).
In pointing to the differential forms that collegial relations take within acade-
mia and industry, we hasten to acknowledge that such comparisons are fraught
with complexity, given the multiple levels to which comparisons must attend.
Although we have emphasized rising levels of status competition among scientists
Contradiction, convergence and the knowledge economy Page 17 of 29
operating within the same or overlapping area of specialization, academic scien-
tists do retain highly collegial relations with the members of their own research
teams and to some extent with colleagues in their own departments. And
obviously, biotech firms must, by their very nature, maintain sharply competitive
relations with their commercial rivals. We suggest that social relations within the
two domains contain elements of both competition and cooperation, yet in ways
that have begun to shift. On the one hand, relations among scientists in the same
or overlapping areas of specialization seem increasingly market-like, as compe-
tition for academic capital impedes informal intellectual exchange. On the
other hand, the very appearance of biotech firms can be viewed as an effort to
institutionalize the collegial norms that have long characterized the members
of a laboratory team and to generalize those norms throughout a given firm.
Although elements of incongruity remain, what seems to characterize both aca-
demic and commercial science is the increasing purchase of a proprietary relation
towards knowledge, with academic scientists and biotech firms each adopting
an entrepreneurial or competitive orientation towards colleagues in similar or
overlapping fields.
5.3 Publications as currency
A key question that emerges here, of course, concerns the degree to which pro-
perty considerations constrain commercial scientists from sharing their results
with parties external to the firm. On this score, the long-held concern has been
that commercial enterprises will be loath to allow publication of their results,
for doing so would place privately owned knowledge in the public domain. To
be sure, several of the firms in our study looked askance at such a prospect
and saw little value in the publication of proprietary findings within peer-
reviewed journals. Yet this orientation quite clearly applied to a minority of the
firms in our sample. Far more commonly, firms actively embraced the academic
tradition of journal publication, making ample provision for scientists to publish
the results of company research. At times, our respondents pointed to the cogni-
tive orientations scientists had imported from academia (‘it’s something they’ve
developed and they bring with them’). At other times, our respondents pointed to
the legitimacy-seeking behaviour of the firms (‘when a company is new and
trying to establish itself ..., publications help the company establish credibility’).
Either way, it seemed clear that publication was an important part of the expec-
tations that these biotech firms embraced. Indeed, one science director went so
far as to boast about the citation ratings of his firm, adopting a posture that
might easily be taken by a dean or department head.
Our interviews at biotech firms made this point clearly and repeatedly. Said
one scientist at a large Bay Area corporation:
Page 18 of 29 S. P. Vallas and D. L. Kleinman
You know, we want to be successful scientists and we’re, in many ways
I would say, academics at heart and we know that. When you’re excited
about what you do, you want to tell people about it, and you want to
get their ideas, and so you have to be open, and if you’re not talking to
people on the outside, you get kind of stuck in one way of thinking ....
I mean it’s just part of the whole scientific process ... .If you’re not
publishing, if you’re not going to conferences, then of course you’re not a
real scientist.
A scientist at a mid-sized firm on the West Coast explained that firms accommo-
date and even encourage publication, so long as their legal staff are consulted and
can file patent applications prior to an article’s submission:
I mean, see, it’s weird because there’s sort of like this myth that
permeated about ‘oh when you’re in industry, you can’t publish.’
I found that to be ... total bull. When I actually got here, there was
really no difference.
Yet another scientist, this one at a large Bay Area firm:
I think it’s sort of the dual nature of [this] company that they both want
to produce drugs and want to be recognized as a first-rate research
place. And again, I think in the company’s mind those two aren’t
necessarily so separate ... [Publishing] creates an outside view of the
company that makes really good people want to come here and want
to interact with us, and I’ve seen that a lot. When you say the name
[of the firm], people go ‘Oh, you know, I want to come there, I want
to talk to you, I want to work with you...’
Although, on its face, pursuit of scholarly publication seems to run counter to the
property interests of the firm, our data suggest that scholarly publications have in
fact served as an important source of currency that can actually further a firm’s
material position. Making allowance for or indeed even encouraging publication
productivity enables firms to recruit and retain the best talent, and in doing so
foster connections with other scientists, universities and investors, and govern-
ment agencies as well (Powell et al., 2005).
7
Given these points, it is not difficult
to understand why an increasing proportion of the most frequently cited articles
in biotechnology are authored or co-authored by scientists employed by com-
mercial enterprises (Stephan, 1996). Apparently, in this respect, the logics of
7
This point is consistent with data suggesting that entrepreneurial scientists (those enmeshed in
commercial ventures) are in fact more highly productive in terms of publication than are those
who are more distant from commercial networks. (see Zucker and Darby, 1996; Stuart and Ding,
2006).
Contradiction, convergence and the knowledge economy Page 19 of 29
academic and industry are not so incommensurable as some theorists have
previously held.
6. Conclusions
This study provides a number of findings that hold important implications along
two different planes. First, they prompt a rethinking of previous efforts to under-
stand the changing structure of scientific research. And, second, they provide an
example of institutional change that takes a different form than that which the
dominant theories have allowed. In these concluding remarks, we draw out
both sets of implications and offer some suggestions for future research.
First, and with respect to the processes currently reshaping research in life
sciences, our findings lend credence to our claim that the codes and practices
from industry and academia have grown more intertwined, engendering struc-
tural and cultural shifts that previous studies have missed. Caution is needed
here: despite our efforts to reconstruct normative shifts, our research has utilized
a cross-sectional design that cannot directly capture temporal shifts. It thus
cannot document the co-evolution of university and commercial research so
much as provide a comparison of the organizational logics that characterize
each. Mindful of these limitations (and of the paucity of such cross-domain com-
parisons in previous research), we suggest that the normative constructs found in
both university and commercial laboratories have grown increasingly less dis-
tinct. The culture of university science seems clearly to have incorporated entre-
preneurial pressures to a greater extent than before, even as commercial science
has moved to adopt codes and conventions that had previously been specific to
university laboratories. Indeed, commenting on the willingness of biotech
firms to accommodate the norm of journal publication and intellectual exchange,
and in the light of the abundant resources that companies can provide, many of
our respondents had begun to conclude that private industry better accommodates
‘academic’ norms than does the academy itself.
Our findings further suggest that there is some basis to the fear, often voiced by
critics of university – industry relations, that salient obstacles have begun to
impede the sharing of information and other resources among academic scien-
tists. Yet we find that such impediments do not hinge on such formal, insti-
tutional arrangements as patent rights, licensing constraints or direct ties to
industry (predominant concerns in the literature). Indeed, such arrangements
were only episodically reported among the academic scientists we studied.
Rather, it is the normative orientation that has taken root in many departments
and disciplines, based in status competition, which impedes the sharing of knowledge
and other resources among professional scientists. In other words, proprietary con-
cerns do obstruct cooperative and collegial relations, but these relations are
Page 20 of 29 S. P. Vallas and D. L. Kleinman
premised on status competition among scientists rather than on the formal –legal
apparatuses that analysts have stressed.
Our findings suggest that a nascent knowledge regime has begun to emerge,
however unevenly, across previously distinct institutional domains. This regime is,
we believe, different from its predecessors in that it incorporates conflicting
imperatives, lending it a hybrid character that is riddled with inconsistencies,
ironies and anomalies. Thus, for example, university departments find themselves
torn between their traditional focus on curiosity-driven research and their newer
emphasis on research with commercial applications. This tension—viewed by
administrators and faculty in disparate ways—lends the structure of academic
research a more contentious nature than in the past, reflecting the normative
duality that governs university research. Yet, much the same is true of private
industry, which has likewise found its traditional commitment to profitable
research overlaid by an ethos that supports academic norms and practices
(Dubinskas, 1988). The results again infuse the structure of scientific research
with a conflicted and contradictory character.
Although we cannot develop the point in the present context, we believe that
these developments cut to the very heart of the knowledge economy. Previously,
organizational forms—and with them, organization theory—were predicated on
the existence of an antipathy between institutional systems that supported the
accumulation of academic capital, on the one hand, and of economic capital,
on the other. Yet, as shown by the rise of the biotechnology industry (and, we
suspect, by other knowledge industries such as information technology, com-
munications and nanotechnology as well), the accumulation of these two
forms of capital has grown increasingly intertwined: now, firms seek to nurture
the production of high prestige science in order to attract venture capital and
other forms of financial investment, while universities seek out opportunities
for the accumulation of economic capital as a means of fueling the production
of high prestige science. As the circuit of capital gains institutional force, we
suspect that the ordering of these respective priorities—indeed, the very distinc-
tion itself—will begin to acquire increasingly ironic forms. It is familiar to find
that one partner in a university/industry initiative will seek out enhanced oppor-
tunities for publication and prestige, while the other seeks augmented revenues.
But ironically, in any given transaction, it may increasingly be the firms that are
interested in high prestige publications and scientists, and the universities that are
concerned with establishing revenue streams.
It is important to note that the pattern we have identified was not uniformly
found across the laboratories we explored. Provisions for academic practices
seemed most highly pronounced at the more stable and successful firms that
had survived for a number of years. Although much more research is needed
on this point, this finding begins to suggest that a selection process may be at
Contradiction, convergence and the knowledge economy Page 21 of 29
work, in which the growth of biotechnology firms hinges not only on structural
but also on cultural adaptations—that is, not merely on their embeddedness
within relational networks (Powell et al., 1996; Powell et al., 2005) but also on
their capacity to institutionalize academic norms, where the latter provide stra-
tegic means with which to attract and retain top-quality scientific expertise
and, in turn, venture capital as well. This point compares intriguingly with
recent findings reported by Owen-Smith (2003), indicating that the success of
academic institutions increasingly rests on their ability to deploy hybrid strategies
for growth, commercializing their scientific research and using such assets to
support academic pursuits. The equivalent point may be true for biotech firms
as well. The suggestion that emerges here is that managers and administrators
on either side of the university– industry divide are increasingly led to adopt
similarly hybridized strategies, combining previously distinct logics to achieve
organizational goals.
Although much more research is needed on the conduits through which
codes and practices from industry migrate to academia and vice versa, our
research prompts a set of observations concerning the mechanisms that may
facilitate such cultural exchanges. We believe that academic administrators,
responding to pressure from state legislators and the general public, have
promoted a vision of universities as economic development engines, with
implications for the value that institutions attach to externally funded research
as a criterion for tenure and promotion. At the same time, support from
federal agencies and foundations for scholarly research increasingly comes
with calls for commercial relevance. Likewise, our findings lead us to suspect
that labour market conditions, borne of an oversupply of PhDs in life sciences,
have encouraged university scientists to adopt an increasingly entrepreneurial
ethos, compelling them to regard their research in an increasingly covetous
or proprietary way.
For their part, biotech firms themselves have had a major impact on the logic
that governs knowledge production in life sciences. By recruiting especially pro-
minent scientists, emulating the culture of academic laboratories, and providing
the material and intellectual resources needed to conduct cutting-edge research,
commercial laboratories have powerfully reshaped prestige hierarchies (Leicht
and Fennell, 1997), altering the professional norms and categories transmitted
to junior scientists as well (Stuart and Ding, 2006). Straddling both worlds,
finally, are conduits such as foundations (whose funding emphases increasingly
underwrite entrepreneurial science), business schools (whose curricula in know-
ledge management provide administrative personnel) and university licensing or
technology transfer offices as well (Colyvas and Powell, 2006).
It is worth reiterating why we call the process underway asymmetrical conver-
gence: although codes and practices flow in both directions, it is the influence of
Page 22 of 29 S. P. Vallas and D. L. Kleinman
the commercial ethos that has enjoyed the upper hand, especially in an era of
sharpening economic competition and the global diffusion of neo-liberal econo-
mic policy generally. Indeed, this is very likely why commercial values now
pervade the university even in the absence of formal UIRs: few normative bases
exist on which the dominance of market values might be challenged. Barring
changes in the balance of power, we expect that the emerging knowledge
regime will continue to reflect the greater power of commercial priorities,
though in ways which are likely to assume a highly uneven form. Indeed, the
nature of such disparities constitutes an important avenue for future research.
Our interview data suggest that university administrators are far more suppor-
tive of the commercial ethos than are the faculty members they oversee. This
finding suggests that the dominance of a commercial logic may at least partly
be a function of the power which administrators exercise within academic organ-
izations. If so, then significant variations should exist in the manner with which
asymmetrical convergence unfolds across distinct tiers of higher education within
the United States. Within leading research institutions, for example, where faculty
members have relatively greater power, we would expect the tension between
commercial and collegial organizational logics to be especially pronounced, as
faculty bring their professional orientations to bear on the changes that admin-
istrators seek to pursue (Owen-Smith and Powell, 2001). Outside the upper
tier of universities, however, a different set of conditions is likely to obtain.
Administrators will be especially prone to seek out venues for commercial pur-
suits as a means of enhancing their institutional rankings (Owen-Smith, 2003;
Brint, 2005). Yet faculty members here enjoy significantly less power to police
the boundary between entrepreneurial and commercial logics. As a result, we
believe that the entrepreneurial logic is likely to grow increasingly pronounced
within less prestigious contexts, where the academic counterweight is less
firmly established. Given the relatively low frequency with which commercially
oriented research actually succeeds in generating significant streams of revenue,
the abrogation of academic norms may unfold with few material rewards to
show in return. Thus asymmetrical convergence may differentially unfold,
perhaps equipping the most prominent institutions to gain enhanced resources
and prestige while imposing less advantageous or even deformed or distended
effects on institutions that hold less privileged positions within the structure of
higher education.
Yet, even within top-tier universities, any returns that flow from an increas-
ingly commercial orientation may be offset by growing threats to the academic
claim of objectivity and concern for the public good—the basis on which
academy has long based its legitimacy claims (Bok, 2003). This point warrants
careful consideration, as the accumulation of academic and economic capital
grows more intricately interwoven and as questions arise about the independence
Contradiction, convergence and the knowledge economy Page 23 of 29
and integrity of scientific studies undertaken with industrial support and
sponsorship. Ironically, academic scientists may find it increasingly difficult to
maintain what Bourdieu (1977,p.171, 172) once called ‘the sincere fiction of dis-
interested exchange’ (cf. Zelizer, 2005). Our point here is that the structural
reconfiguration of academic science generates an increasing tension between
the ‘ideal’ culture of academic science and the ‘real’ culture of market-oriented
logics governing the pursuit of capital in one or another form. How scientists
and administrators manage this tension constitutes an important question for
future research.
Finally, our study’s findings speak to prevailing conceptions of organizational
change. In an effort to respond to accusations of a bias towards stasis and conti-
nuity, institutional theorists have produced highly suggestive accounts regarding
the dynamics of institutional change (see Schneiberg and Clemens, 2006). In
certain respects, the resulting literature resembles Kuhn’s (1962) theory of scien-
tific revolutions. Institutional logics (for Kuhn, paradigms) arise and enjoy a
taken-for-granted status until social structural conditions produce an accumu-
lation of anomalies that discredit or de-institutionalize the previously doxic
organizational form. A crisis then ensues until a coalition of actors emerges
that can establish a new cognitive map. This reasoning is evident in work on cor-
porate forms of organization (Davis et al., 1994) and in the recent scholarship on
health care by Scott et al. (2000). While this approach does address the question
of institutional change, work in this vein has continued to presuppose the exis-
tence of uniformity and consistency within organizational fields. We suggest
that the case of biotechnology is especially important because it begins to show
how inherently conflicting logics can in fact endure over time, providing a rela-
tively permanent organizational regime despite—arguably, even because of—
such internal inconsistencies (Stryker, 1994).
We contend that biotechnology provides a case that is marked by an increasing
commingling of normative codes and practices from two previously relatively dis-
tinct institutional domains, leading to the emergence of a knowledge regime that
is fraught with tension, contradiction and inconsistency (Dubinskas, 1988). Far
from demanding resolution, such tensions can in fact serve as a source of creative
dynamism, dialogue and reflexivity, compelling the various parties to justify their
domain assumptions, to engage in dialogue with those whose orientation differs
from their own and thus to make possible a deeper and more innovative under-
standing of the major tasks at hand. This is precisely what Stark (2001), in develo-
ping a concept of ‘heterarchy’, refers to as the ‘asset of ambiguity.’
There is certainly room for debate over the social and organizational
conditions that affect the outcome of such contradictory states. What seems
less open to dispute is the notion that institutional change takes a broader
form than theorists have allowed, increasingly involving contexts in which rival
Page 24 of 29 S. P. Vallas and D. L. Kleinman
normative codes and practices compete for predominance within organizational
fields. If so, then the case we have developed here may have broader relevance for
models of institutional change, drawing attention to the ways in which organiza-
tional fields incorporate inherently conflicting codes and practices as an abiding
feature of institutional life. Needed is research that allows for the multiplicity of
normative codes and practices, especially in an era in which institutional bound-
aries are often blurred by technological developments, mergers and acquisitions,
globalization and the shifting coordinates of public policy (Stryker, 1994 and
Owen-Smith; Powell, 2001). Previous generations of organizational theory
were often attentive to internal tensions and normative conflicts within organiz-
ations of various types (e.g. Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967; Meyer and Rowan 1977).
The case of biotechnology seems to suggest that such contradictory or chimerical
forms may have increasing currency, forcing us to broaden or extend currently
dominant conceptions of institutional change.
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