The commercialization of academic science has come to be understood as economically desirable for institutions, individual researchers, and the public. Not surprisingly, commercial activity, particularly that which results from patenting, appears to be producing changes in the standards used to evaluate scientists’ performance and contributions. In this context, concerns about a gender gap in patenting activity have arisen and some have argued for the need to encourage women to seek more patents. They believe that because academic advancement is mainly dependent (...) on productivity (Stuart and Ding in American Journal of Sociology 112:97–144, 2006 ; Azoulay et al. in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 63:599–623, 2007 ), differences in research output have the power to negatively impact women’s careers. Moreover, in the case of patenting activity, they claim that the gender gap also has the potential to negatively affect society. This is so because scientific and technological advancement and innovation play a crucial role in contemporary societies. Thus, women’s more limited involvement in the commercialization of science and technology can also be detrimental to innovation itself. Nevertheless, calls to encourage women to patent on grounds that such activity is likely to play a significant role in the betterment of both women’s careers and society seem to be based on two problematic assumptions: (1) that the methods to determine women’s productivity in patenting activities are an appropriate way to measure their research efforts and the impact of their work, and (2) that patenting, particularly in academia, benefits society. The purpose of this paper is to call into question these two assumptions. (shrink)

Intersecting systems of inequality are remarkably resistant to change. Many universities, however, seek National Science Foundation Institutional Transformation awards to change processes, procedures, and cultures to make science, technology, engineering, and mathematics departments more inclusive. In this article we describe a case study with observations for eight years of before, five during, and seven after intensive efforts to increase women through reducing barriers and increasing access to women. Finally, we reflect on flawed assumptions built into the proposal, the slow and (...) uneven change in the proportion of women over time, the strengths and weaknesses of numeric assessments, and the value of a longer view for seeing how seeds planted with promising practices initiated during the award may end with the funding but can reemerge and bear fruit when faculty who engage in equity work are in positions of authority later in their careers. (shrink)

Gender scholars argued that gendered organizations theory needs updating as organizational logic has shifted amid neoliberal workplace transformations. This qualitative case study of a high-tech firm reveals how features of the traditional work logic remain resilient. I analyze the gendered implications of a high-tech startup restructuring and going public, finding the flexible organization to bureaucratize, implementing specialized jobs and a hierarchy with standardized career ladders. Going public creates conflicting gendered logics that place women at a structural disadvantage, relegating them to (...) low-status, narrow jobs while simultaneously demanding masculine ideal worker norms of visibility and self-promotion. Despite networking, women experience job insecurity and a glass ceiling, while men are assumed ideal workers and advance. By tracing one high-tech firm’s restructuring from a startup to public company, I demonstrate how the collision of new and traditional workplace logics perpetuates gender inequalities. (shrink)

Gender differences in science and engineering have been studied in various countries. Most of these studies find that women are underrepresented in the S&E workforce and publish less than their male peers. The factors that contribute to gender differences in experience and performance in S&E careers can vary from one country to another, yet they remain underexplored. This paper is among the first to systematically compare gender differences in the publication productivity of academic scientists and engineers with doctoral degrees in (...) the U.S. and China. Findings from negative binomial regressions show that women publish less than their male counterparts in science but not in engineering in the U.S. In China, women do not differ from men in publication productivity in science but publish more than their male counterparts in engineering. In addition, we find that some background variables affect men’s and women’s publication productivity differently. The findings are analyzed in the context of the different cultures of the two fields and of the two countries. Limitations and policy implications are also discussed. (shrink)

The focus of the current study is the individual and environmental attributes of inventiveness among children and adolescents. Research was conducted on the young inventors who were part of a nation-wide inventive ideation contest for children and adolescents in P. R. China. A total of 621 4th to 12th grade students from 112 schools all over China participated in the study. Among them, 38 reported holding one or more patents. Independent t-test showed, compared to their lower-level counterparts, higher-level young inventors (...) were more intrinsically motivated for inventive endeavours and were more open to new experiences. They also reported more encouragement and resources for invention from their schools. Logistic regression showed that school encouragement made the major contribution in discriminating these two groups. 2×3 MANONA revealed a significant main effect of gender and age group but no significant interaction between the two factors. Results of the univariate tests challenged the stereotyped view against the inventive ability of girls. Girls scored higher in Openness and lower in executive thinking style. The aesthetic appeal of their inventive products was also rated higher by experts. Albeit this superiority, girls, however, reported less encouragement from their parents to make inventions. Results of the cross-sectional study of the different age groups did not support a hypothesized growth of inventiveness from the lower to the higher grades. Instead, an uneven developmental pattern in inventiveness and the relevant domains were revealed, which was on the large part attributed to the influence of the educational environment. Taken together, the results of the current study highlight the important role the environmental factors play in fostering or hindering the development of inventiveness among children and adolescents. (shrink)

The analysis of social networks has remained a crucial and yet understudied aspect of the efforts to measure Triple Helix linkages. The Triple Helix model aims to explain, among other aspects of knowledge-based societies, “the current research system in its social context” (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000:109). This paper develops a novel approach to study the research system from the perspective of the individual, through the analysis of the relationships among researchers, and between them and other social actors. We develop a (...) new set of techniques and show how they can be applied to the study of a specific case (a group of academics within a university department). We analyse their informal social networks and show how a relationship exists between the characteristics of an individual’s network of social links and his or her research output. (shrink)

Entrepreneurs of contested commodities often face stakeholders engaged in market excluding boundary work driven by ethical considerations. For example, the conversion of academic scientific knowledge into technologies that can be owned and sold is a growing global trend and key stakeholders have different ethical responses to this contested commodity. Commercialization of science can be viewed as a good thing because people believe it bolsters economic growth and broadly benefits society. Others view it as bad because they believe it discourages basic (...) research that ought to be freely shared without concern for profit. Taking a descriptive sociological approach, we posit that the stance of a religious tradition toward capitalism will help shape individual scientists’ views on science commercialization and test whether the religious tradition of scientists correlates with their attitude toward the commercialization of science. To maximize variance on the religious tradition dimension, we analyze pooled data from a cross-national survey of university biologists and physicists encompassing France, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Taiwan, Turkey, UK and the USA. We indeed find religious tradition differences. Hindus and scientists with no religious tradition are more likely to agree that commercialization of science “harms a university’s commitment to knowledge production” than Protestants. We end with a discussion on business ethics and the moral limits of the market as well as implications for entrepreneurs of contested commodities. (shrink)

Is the market civilizing or destructive? The increased salience of science commercialization is forcing scientists to address this question. Benefiting from the sociology of morality literature’s increased attention to specific kinds of morality and engaging with economic sociology’s moral markets literature, we generate competing hypotheses about scientists’ value-driven attitudes toward patenting. The Civilizing Market thesis suggests scientists who prioritize universalism will tend to support patenting. The Destructive Market thesis, by contrast, suggests universalism will be correlated with opposition to patenting. We (...) analyze survey data from biologists and physicists nested within academic organizations, which are nested within the following regions: France, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Taiwan, Turkey, UK, and the USA. Employing multilevel analysis, we find correlational evidence to support the Destructive Market thesis. Universalism is associated with anti-patenting attitudes, suggesting scientists expect patenting to have deleterious effects on science and society. We end with a discussion of this article’s implications for the moral markets literature, sociology of morality and business ethics. (shrink)

The commercialization of academic science has come to be understood as economically desirable for institutions, individual researchers, and the public. Not surprisingly, commercial activity, particularly that which results from patenting, appears to be producing changes in the standards used to evaluate scientists’ performance and contributions. In this context, concerns about a gender gap in patenting activity have arisen and some have argued for the need to encourage women to seek more patents. They believe that because academic advancement is mainly dependent (...) on productivity (Stuart and Ding in American Journal of Sociology 112:97–144, 2006; Azoulay et al. in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 63:599–623, 2007), differences in research output have the power to negatively impact women’s careers. Moreover, in the case of patenting activity, they claim that the gender gap also has the potential to negatively affect society. This is so because scientific and technological advancement and innovation play a crucial role in contemporary societies. Thus, women’s more limited involvement in the commercialization of science and technology can also be detrimental to innovation itself. Nevertheless, calls to encourage women to patent on grounds that such activity is likely to play a significant role in the betterment of both women’s careers and society seem to be based on two problematic assumptions: (1) that the methods to determine women’s productivity in patenting activities are an appropriate way to measure their research efforts and the impact of their work, and (2) that patenting, particularly in academia, benefits society. The purpose of this paper is to call into question these two assumptions. (shrink)