Dina Biscotti

UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATORS, AGRICULTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGY, AND ACADEMIC CAPITALISM: Defining the Public Good to Promote University–Industry Relationships

The theory of academic capitalism explains how federal, state, and university policies and people have expanded university–industry relationships (UIRs) and the commercialization of knowledge. These changes represent a profound shift in the way university research is expected to contribute to the public good. Because university administrators are responsible for creating organizational policies and infrastructures that are consistent with their organizational mission and with federal and state laws, it is critical to analyze how university administrators assess UIRs in relation to public-interest scientific research. Our in-depth interviews at six prominent land-grant universities with 59 key administrators having oversight responsibilities for agricultural biotechnology research programs and UIRs reveal how administrators justify their role in promoting UIRs. They tend to interpret their universitys mission to contribute to the public good in a way that is conducive to encouraging UIRs and to commercializing research discoveries. Their rationale emerges within a context of having to justify their budgets to state governments.

The Two Cultures of Science: Implications for University-Industry Relationships in the U.S. Agriculture Biotechnology

Partnerships between U.S. universities and industries have existed for several decades and in recent years have become generally more varied, wider in scope, more aggressive and experimental and higher in public visibility. In addition, in the last few decades, public and private interests have advocated for government policies and laws to globally promote the commercialization of university science. This paper examines the persistence or convergence of the two cultures of science and the implications of this commercialization for university-industry relationships in agriculture biotechnology. The perceptions and values of over 200 U.S. university and industry scientists, managers and administrators who participate in or oversee research collaborations in agricultural biotechnology were analyzed. The findings revealed that the participants in these research relationships continue to perceive very distinct cultures of science and identify a wide range of concerns and disadvantages of these partnerships. Several actions were discussed to ensure that the two cultures serve complementary roles and that they maximize the public benefits from these increasing collaborations.

Constructing “Disinterested” Academic Science Relational Work in University–Industry Research Collaborations

This article analyzes how exchange participants in university–industry agricultural biotechnology research collaborations manage and create differences between the academy and industry with regard to the open dissemination and commercialization of scientific knowledge. Our focus is on the constitutive relations that define the boundary between academic and commercial science. We identify a particular “relational package” that formalizes and standardizes exchanges of money from industry for privileged access to university research discoveries. Our analysis of academic scientists’ justificatory narratives about their patenting decisions challenges the oft-made assertion that academic patenting on its face should be taken as evidence of a blurred institutional boundary between academic and commercial science.