History and Past Activities
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History and Past Activities |
Marja Häyrinen-Alestalo & Ulla Peltola
University of Helsinki, Department of Sociology, Research Group for Comparative
Sociology
P.O.Box 18 (Unioninkatu 35), 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
tel. 358-9-19123964 fax. 358-9-19123967
e-mail: marja.alestalo@helsinki.fi
upeltola@valt.helsinki.fi
Universities responding to the pressure to commercialize their knowledge production
Within science studies a variety of theories have been constructed on the social value of science. In the 1980s and the early 1990s many scholars have emphasized the problem of utilization and dissemination of academic knowledge. The aim has been to study the scientification of the rationale behind governmental decicion-making. The argument has been that eliminating certain communicational, organizational, educational and attitudional restraints between the scientific and political cultures will result in an intesified demand for the uses of scientific information.
Today this kind of means-ends rationality no longer serves political aspirations to reorganize the decicion-making process. Even though the public authorities can still be considered as clients of scientific expertise, the concept of a client has become incresingly regarded as a pure commercial activity. The government programs tend to argue that all societal activities are responsible for demonstrating their use and investment value. At the same time technology policy has become a super-policy that is projected on all other policies. Accordingly, all potential producers of knowledge and information should be able to produce surplus value and to contribute to economic growth. Technology policy makers have also introduced the concept of innovation in which every potential producer of knowledge is equal. Their social value is derived from their capacity to produce and sell knowledge products.
The idea of commercialization indicates that the problem of utilization of research results has turned away from the aims of providing scientific expertise to goverment authorities towards pure industrial activities. Public authorities are no longer seen as clients that require scientific knowledge to rationalize their activities. Along with industry, the public authorities should become paying clients that abide by the laws of market forces.
Despite active debate about the university-government-industry links, the problem of actual clients and the conditions that underlie the use of academic knowledge as products have not been studied in a coherent way. Universities vary in their orientation, diciplinary composition, marketing strategies, product development as well as commercialization and point to different compentecies, although they all serve economic goals. Although technological products are dependent on customer- driven markets, social innovations are important as well. It is difficult to establish actual markets if public authorities are the only clients.
In the paper we take closer look at the problem of commercialization as a new form of pressure for universities. By comparing three types of univeristies in Finland (traditional multi-diciplinary university, business school and university of technology) we scrutinize the role of universities as part of an innovation chain. We pay specific interest in social sciences by studying three departments at the respective universities (social psychology, organisation and management, work psychology) and demonstrate complexities in establishing commercial processes even in universities which by defination should be aware of the logic of the market forces.
Sociology of Science and Technology NETwork - last update: April 2006