Social Capital and the Absorption of Immigrant Scientists and Engineers into Israeli Communities of Experts

Introduction

During the early 1990s, Israel experienced a massive influx of immigration from the former Soviet Union, now amounting to approximately one-sixth of the Jewish population in Israel. This immigration wave has influenced Israeli society and the economy in a variety of ways, and has attracted considerable research attention.¹ We focus on a neglected topic, namely the level of absorption of immigrant scientists and engineers into the Israeli community of science and engineering.

During the early 1990s, various "position holders" in the Israeli government realized that many of the new immigrants were highly educated and experienced in scientific and technical work. Some of the immigrants had even held top-level positions in various research facilities in their country of origin. It also soon became clear that the existing academic and technological infrastructure in Israel could not absorb all the scientists and engineers, and the government quickly launched a number of initiatives to solve the problem. The Government Program for Technological Incubators (GPTI), which we study here, was one of these government initiatives, and was placed under the supervision of the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Several goals underlie the establishment of the GPTI. Primarily, the government wished to prevent a "brain drain" of scientists, engineers, and technicians by securing jobs for them within Israel's high-tech industry. For example, one of the rules of the GPTI was that at least 50% of the incubator's workforce must be composed of new immigrants. Second, as part of a larger Zionist agenda, the incubator program was intended to absorb immigrant Jews into Israeli society, and to geographically settle many of them in the "periphery," consisting of border towns and other places distant from Tel-Aviv, the country's economic and cultural center. By situating many of these incubators in these locations, the planners hoped to bring new life to remote places. Finally, the program was meant to boost the Israeli economy, with a clear government demand that incubator projects manufacture locally, and export finished products. With growing foreign investment in Israeli high-tech industry during the 1990s, the government also hoped that, given its institutional support, it could attract venture capital to the incubator projects.

In 1998, we launched a study of one of the government incubators located at Nesher, a suburb of the city of Haifa, in northern Israel. This incubator is affiliated with the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, a leading university and research institute known worldwide. Our aim was to examine the degree to which the incubator had attained its original goal of absorbing immigrants into the existing scientific and engineering community. First, we examined the percentage of new immigrants among incubator employees. Second, we explored their representation in managerial positions within the incubator. We felt that a high percentage of new immigrant scientists and engineers among project managers, not only incubator workers, would serve as a partial indication of the success of the incubator's original goals. Third, we tried to assess the degree of assimilation of new immigrant scientists and engineers into local innovation networks. Innovation networks, as we define them, consist of scientists, engineers, and technicians who attempt to transform scientific and technical knowledge and know-how into profit. To make this assessment, we compared the relationships that veteran Israelis and new immigrants working in the incubator constructed with the Technion, which is also part-owner of this facility. The level of similarity between the social networks constructed by veteran Israelis and immigrants was a measure of the degree to which the immigrants were absorbed into the local community of science and engineering. Before we move on to the empirical section, let us review the literature on the role of social networks within scientific and technical communities. This literature emphasizes the central role of informal social networks in science and engineering work.

Social Networks In Science and Engineering

Sociologists of scientific knowledge (SSK) have long recognized the crucial role of informal networks in the social construction of scientific knowledge and know-how. For example, Crane coined...