Engaging With Paradox, Striving for Sustainability: Relating to Public Science and Commercial Research

Abstract

Though paradox has pervasive effects on science work and sustainability in scientific research, it remains underexplored at the intersection of these contexts. The article addresses this nexus and contributes to the relational perspective on paradox by supplementing the emphasis on systemic relations with human relationships. The study examines experiences of research scientists with striving for sustainability and explicates the tensions they confront between public science and commercial research. It identifies three relational paradoxes: service ethos, role identity, and professional integrity; and it outlines how scientists manage them through approaches premised on differentiation and integration. Through its grounds in relationality, the work affirms the salience of extant themes on paradox for sustainability in science work and poses new theoretical contribution by showing how both paradoxes and responses are embedded in social relations. In effect, scientists address sustainability while engaging with paradox whereby they relate to both public science and commercial research.