Science as a Vocation in the 1990s

Abstract

This chapter outlines a framework for thinking about value change in academic science that views culture as a set of axes of variation and considers academic science as an organized activity shaped by general organizational forces. It discusses aspects of this perspective on academic science with interview material from a study of the consequences of federal funding for academic research. The chapter describes some major underlying dimensions of value change and conflict in academic science. Marginal positions exist and have flourished to insure that academic science is more responsive to external direction and to allow universities to expand and contract in response to changes in the market. Recognizing the important role of formal organizations in modern academic science allows work in organizational theory to be brought to bear on the problem of cultural change. The basic view of culture as axes of variation and the role of organizational factors will be used as sensitizing concepts, not a testable theory.