Organizational Influences on Scientific Integrity

Our image of the working scientist remains inherently romantic (1). We envision an individual, working alone, pursuing knowledge in an area solely for its intrinsic interest. As attractive as the image may be, it has little to do with the realities of current work in the sciences (2, 3, 4). Scientists work in a distinctly social setting, conducting their work in both collaboration and competition with others (5, 6). This work, moreover, occurs in organizational settings, including business, government and academia. Thus, the pressures that face people working in any organization—pressures of time, conformity, resources, and production—also confront scientists. Although one might argue that scientists, by virtue of their work, are granted more autonomy and are carefully buffered from the more “ugly” demands of organizational life, the conditions currently confronting most scientific endeavors are such that we can expect organizational pressures to become a progressively more important influence on scientific work. The emerging forces of the new economy, where innovation is the true competitive edge, move scientists from the periphery of the business world to the heart of the industrial enterprise (7). Academia, moreover, under the financial pressures imposed by funding cutbacks, has placed a new emphasis on responding to the needs of the business community (8). Finally, academia has begun a slow process, for good or ill, of learning how to manage itself differently, and manage itself like a business. Given these pressures, there is a need to understand how organizational variables influence scientific integrity. Unfortunately, systematic studies of scientific integrity are virtually nonexistent. However, a number of scholars have sought to understand the variables that influence integrity in organizational settings as a general phenomenon. Accordingly, our intent in the present study is to examine prior studies of integrity with respect to their implications for understanding organizational influences on scientific integrity. We will begin by considering the findings obtained in one line of research concerned with the individual and situational factors that influence integrity in organizational settings. Subsequently, we will examine the kind of organizationally-based situational variables that might influence scientific integrity using a multi-level perspective that considers situational variables operating at the individual, group, and organizational levels of analysis (9).