The Organization Man

CHAPTER 17 The Bureaucratization of the Scientist

The Bureaucratization of the Scientist 217 Because it is small, the small firm has one potential advantage over the big one. It can't afford big research teams to administrate or interlocking committees to work up programs, and it doesn't have a crystallized company "family" to adjust to. Because it hasn't caught up yet with modern management, to put it another way, it provides an absence of the controls that make the scientist restive. Few small corporations have seized the opportunity, and at this writing there is no sign they ever will. But the opportunity is there. CHAPTER 17 The Bureaucratization of the Scientist LET'S TURN NOW FROM THE CORPORATION TO ACADEMIA, FOR HERE WE can more clearly see the root of the problem. If the academic scientist is seduced, it cannot be explained away as Babbitt versus the intellectual, the pressures of commercialism, or the managers' misunderstanding of science. Nor can it be blamed on want of talent; there may not be enough quantity, but every man-power survey has shown that so far as quality is concerned, science has been attracting the top slice of our youth. Yet every one of the trends to be found in corporation research can be found in academic research, and with consequences far greater. There is the same bent to applied rather than fundamental research, the same bent to large team projects, the same bent to highly systematized planning, to committees and programs. Like his brother in management, the scientist is becoming an organization man. To say that the incubus lies in organization itself would be partially correct, but it would also be somewhat futile. Must the metamorphosis of the scientist be inevitable? The shift from the entrepreneurial to the administrative has been to a large degree a necessary response to the needs of our times, and science cannot remain isolated from it. But it is not the fact of bureaucratization itself 218 THE ORGANIZATION MAN that is the central problem. The central problem is the acceptance of it. In no field, except the arts, does the elevation of administrative values hold more dangers, yet in this respect science is not even fighting a holding action. To the contrary, the people in the foundations and the universities are reinforcing these values, and by reinforcing them, further molding the scientists to the organization image. Not purposely, no, but this makes it only the worse. FUNDAMENTAL VERSUS APPLIED RESEARCH? IT IS A TRUISM AMONG American scientists that we have lacked a strong tradition in fundamental research, that we have been borrowing our ideas from Europe, that we can no longer count on the flow of scientific immigrants from abroad, that we urgently need, in short, to create a climate in this country that will encourage basic discovery. And every year, much as in the businessman's plea for the humanities, ideal and practice grow further apart. Of the roughly four billion dollars now being spent on scientific research in this country, approximately 95 per cent is for applied research. The government has become the major patron, for almost half the research money available in the U.S. is in the form of contracts given out by government agencies, principally the Atomic Energy Commission and the Office of Naval Research. Some very enlightened men have directed these agencies, and considering the pressures under which they must work-secrecy requirements, the need to justify research in terms of national defense-most scientists believe they have fought a very good fight. But they have been able to go only so far; under the watchful eye of Congress, they have spent roughly 93 per cent of the total $5.6 billion distributed in 1953, 1954, and 1955 on applied rather than fundamental research . There has been slight improvement; in 1955 the proportion devoted to fundamental research went up to 7·3 per cent (from 6.6 per cent in 1954). It can be argued that the proportion is not crucial, because the government sums are now so huge that there is more, in absolute dollars, available for fundamental work. But the proportion is crucial . The government monies have not been simply an addition to regular academic research; they have altered the whole structure of it. The universities once conceived themselves as sanctuaries for The Bureaucratization of the Scientist 219 fundamental work, but the magnetic attraction of government funds has been irresistible. As the universities have accepted more research contracts, they have relinquished control over the...