Academic organizations and new industrial fields: Berkeley and Stanford after the rise of biotechnology
Introduction
The world of commerce has gained an ever stronger foothold on American university campuses over the last decades (e.g. Gibbons et al., 1994, Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 1998, Slaughter and Leslie, 1997). As studies of key scientific fields such as the life sciences highlight, firms have now become an integral part of scholarly networks within which the creation of scientific knowledge is organized (e.g. Kenney, 1986, Liebeskind et al., 1996, Owen-Smith and Powell, 2004, Owen-Smith et al., 2002). The increasingly strong links between university laboratories and firms have had far-reaching consequences for the institutional landscape in which academic scholars operate.
Apart from altering the day-to-day professional lives of scientists, industry links have had important implications for relationships among scholarly communities within universities. Academic scholarship in modern science is organized in a social order, in which different scholarly communities (e.g. research groups, departments) vie for legitimacy. This study will highlight that the rise of a new science-based industrial field constitutes a disruptive event that provides opportunities for academic institution builders to reshape this social order in their favor. Moreover, this study will examine the mechanisms through which the broader organizational environment, in which a scholarly community is embedded, affects the strategies these institution builders use to pursue the opportunities offered by the rise of new science-based industries.
In no field have the altered dynamics governing the production of scientific knowledge been more apparent than in the biomedical fields opened up by the rise of biotechnology. Fuelling advances in some of the most notable scientific areas to emerge over the last decades such as genome sequencing, stem cell research and molecular medicine, molecular biologists with their close industry ties to biotechnology have been very successful in attracting support for their scientific programs. Over the last decades, many of the most significant infrastructure investments at American university campuses have been investments in molecular biology. Moreover, initiatives by scientific institution builders in molecular biology have been matched by major increases in funding support for the biomedical sciences. For example, congressional appropriations for the National Institutes of Health alone (the key funding agency for basic biomedical research) increased from USD 2.1 Billion in 1975 to USD 29.5 Billion in 2008 (National Institutes of Health, 2008).
In order to better understand the processes that shaped expansions in molecular biology, this study develops a framework to analyze organizational changes at universities. Within this framework scholarly communities in science are seen as socially embedded and organizational outcomes as shaped by struggles over legitimacy among different communities. Zooming in on initiatives led by scholars from two small groups of molecular biologists with close industry ties at the biochemistry departments of the University of California at Berkeley (Berkeley) and Stanford University (Stanford), this study analyzes how these scholars reshaped the local social order governing the life sciences within their universities following the rise of biotechnology.1
Before the birth of biotechnology, the pursuit of scientific knowledge in various academic communities in biology at Berkeley and Stanford was fragmented. In this environment, molecular biologists tied to these universities’ biochemistry departments, like most other scholarly communities in the biological sciences, were organized around a distinctive, separate scientific program. During the 1960s and 1970s, molecular biologists on both campuses attempted on several occasions to mobilize support around expansionist initiatives that encroached on the scientific territories of other scholarly communities in biology. These initiatives, however, were repeatedly thwarted.
All changed after the advent of biotechnology. The altered frames used to legitimize their scholarly activities allowed molecular biologists within the organizational environment at Berkeley and Stanford to attract support for a number of major, expansionist initiatives. These initiatives significantly extended the control by molecular biologists over scholarly resources on their campuses.
This paper is structured as follows. First, it outlines a framework for conceptualizing processes of organizational adaptation by universities following the rise of new science-based industrial fields. Second, it puts into its historical context, the role played by molecular biologists from Berkeley's and Stanford's biochemistry departments in the emergence of the biotechnology industry in the San Francisco region and discusses why major initiatives led by members of this group constitute an interesting case study. Third, it presents a number of new empirical findings. Fourth, it assesses these findings through the lens of the proposed theoretical framework. Finally, it identifies avenues for further investigation.
Section snippets
Theoretical framework
Understanding how scientific knowledge advances requires an examination of how academic actors establish legitimacy in their social environment. Over the last decades scholarship in the sociology of science has changed its emphasis on what it considers the key institutional rules and norms that determine strategies open to scholars to advance their standing. Pioneers in the sociology of science such as Merton (1979) and Ben-David (1991) view the accumulation and transmission of knowledge within
Research design
The empirical sections will examine the dynamics through which organizational models governing academic scholarship at Berkeley and Stanford and frames defining the relationships of these universities to their external environment shaped expansionist initiatives by molecular biologists from these universities’ biochemistry departments following the rise of biotechnology during the late-1970s and 1980s.
The 1970s formed a turning point in the history of molecular biology that heralded the dawn of
Reorganizations at Berkeley and Stanford
Before the 1980s and 1990s, molecular biologists from Berkeley's and Stanford's biochemistry departments had attempted on several occasions to attract support for initiatives that aimed to expand networks of expertise and skills they could rely on in their research. These efforts mostly ended in failure. For example, molecular biologists in partnership with the university administration at Stanford tried to put Paul Berg of the biochemistry department in charge of the university's largest
Discussion
Initiatives emanating from Berkeley's and Stanford's biochemistry departments following the rise of biotechnology underline how new science-based industries have the potential of upsetting local social orders in modern science. These industries not only alter the way scientists live their professional lives inside scholarly communities, they also alter the position of scholarly communities in relationship to other communities within a university. The two discussed cases bring into sharper focus
Conclusion
This study on organizational changes in the life sciences at Berkeley and Stanford following the rise of biotechnology sheds a new light on how institution builders seek to leverage industry ties in the context of struggles for legitimacy within their university. Most importantly, by recasting processes of organizational change within universities as shaped by local political struggles among scholarly communities for legitimacy, this study illuminates how the interplay between scientific
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Colin Crouch, Serena Ferente, Neil Fligstein, Michelle Gittelman, Francesco Lissoni, Laurel Smith-Doerr, Rikard Stankiewicz and Grid Thoma for comments on previous drafts and stimulating discussions regarding the issues explored by this article. Moreover, I want to express my gratitude to the editor Walter Powell and three anonymous referees, whose feedback greatly helped me to improve this paper. This research was supported through a DIME WP European Framework Grant for
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