Is the Market Perceived to be Civilizing or Destructive? Scientists’ Universalism Values and Their Attitudes Towards Patents

Jared L. Peifer (), David R. Johnson () and Elaine Howard Ecklund ()
Additional contact information
Jared L. Peifer: Baruch College
David R. Johnson: University of Nevada, Reno
Elaine Howard Ecklund: Rice University

Journal of Business Ethics, 2021, vol. 170, issue 2, No 4, 253-267

Abstract: Abstract Is the market civilizing or destructive? The increased salience of science commercialization is forcing scientists to address this question. Benefiting from the sociology of morality literature’s increased attention to specific kinds of morality and engaging with economic sociology’s moral markets literature, we generate competing hypotheses about scientists’ value-driven attitudes toward patenting. The Civilizing Market thesis suggests scientists who prioritize universalism (i.e., concern for the welfare of all people) will tend to support patenting. The Destructive Market thesis, by contrast, suggests universalism will be correlated with opposition to patenting. We analyze survey data from biologists and physicists nested within academic organizations, which are nested within the following regions: France, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Taiwan, Turkey, UK, and the USA. Employing multilevel analysis, we find correlational evidence to support the Destructive Market thesis. Universalism is associated with anti-patenting attitudes, suggesting scientists expect patenting to have deleterious effects on science and society. We end with a discussion of this article’s implications for the moral markets literature, sociology of morality and business ethics.

Keywords: Sociology of morality; Moral markets; Contested commodities; Science commercialization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-020-04633-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:170:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-020-04633-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-020-04633-y

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().