The Autonomy of Scientists

Abstract

I wish to comment upon the paper of ProfessorJ. Gaston, 'Autonomy in the Research Role and Participation in Department Decision Making which appeared in yourJournal. While I have great respect for Professor Gaston, may I be permitted to correct some matters in his paper. Professor Gaston is concerned with the problem of role strain produced in situations where professional personnel cannot exercise autonomy in the expression of their occupational activities. In doing so he describes the literature in this field as follows: 'The usual strategy has been to describe how the scientist is in a situation producing role strain because his professional values and norms are different from the values and norms of the organization whose over-riding objective is to produce 'results' for increased profit'. Since I believe I was among the first to give expression to views on the role strain of scientists in my book, The Scientist in American Industry,2 I wish to point out that this is not the nub of the argument that I presented. Rather, both in that instance and in later writings, I emphasized that role strain is inherent in work situations involving professional people and especially scientists in any organization. In industrial organizations and in governmental organizations role strain may be more frequent because of the differences in values and norms present in those organizations as over against academic organizations. In contributed the concept 'colleague authority' to give expression to this viewpoint. I stated that 'colleague authority, permits the exercise of initiative and creativity within the hierarchical organization and the colleague is not constrained by a concern for the rituals that circumscribe individual initiative in a bureaucratic organization. Colleague authority, therefore, limits the emergence of organizational rigidity. It enables the member to exercise great autonomy.'3 The issue is then not simply a matter of the simplistic notion of results or increased profits but the issue is organizational bureaucracy. Gaston in his reading of the literature has overlooked the relevant concepts of hierarchical organization and bureaucracy. Gaston turns to Cotgrove and Box in their book Sciencen Industryn and Society4 for evidence in opposition to the thesis of role strain. In doing