Exploring the Image of Science in the Business Sector: Surveying and Modeling Scientific Culture, Perception and Attitudes Towards Science

Abstract

Jesús Rey-Rocha graduated in Biology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and holds and MsC in Electronic Information Management from the University of Sheffield. He also holds a Doctorate in Sciences from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He is Principal Researcher at the Research Group on Scientific Evaluation and Transfer, Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). His current research interests center on scientific knowledge communication and transfer, and on scientific culture and perception of science in the business sector. Ana Muñoz van den Eynde holds a Bachelor in Psychology degree and a Master of Advanced Studies in Methodology degree from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She also holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Universidad de Oviedo. She is head of the Research Unit on Scientific Culture at the Research Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology (CIEMAT), and her current research interests center on the study and analysis of environmental awareness, scientific culture and the image of science. She is a specialist in methodology and provides expertise to the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology in the design and analysis of the results of the Spanish Survey on Public Perception of Science.

El compromiso del sector privado con la ciencia: abriendo la caja negra de la percepción de la ciencia en la empresa

“…The results reported here confirm the potential we had already anticipated (Rey-Rocha et al, 2019;González-Bravo et al, 2020) of the Public Understanding of Science approach to light up issues related to scientific culture, not only in the general population but also in new scenarios such as the business sector.…”

“…In general, elites express 'a remarkably lower level of traditionalism', and they are 'more inclined to idealize science' than is the general population (2011). In the same year, López-Navarro et al (2011) also confirmed that, in the Spanish context, the perception of science in the wider public and among entrepreneurs and self-employed workers was significantly different, particularly regarding institutional trust and risk management In a recent work, we found that the image of science in the business sector is shaped by 'entrepreneurs' and business managers' perception of science, their interest in and knowledge of science and technology, and their willingness to take action regarding science, R&D and innovation' (Rey Rocha et al, 2019). We thus propose that business engagement in R&D is related to entrepreneurs' and managers' perception of science.…”

“…In other words, it suggests the importance of institutional and contextual knowledge -more than formal contents of scientific knowledge-when it comes to promoting engagement in R&D in the business sector. In fact, we found in our previous research that knowledge of scientific institutions was a better predictor of knowledge of science by CEOs than their level of formal education (Rey-Rocha et al, 2019). This contextual or institutional knowledge is related to the notion of tacit knowledge (Collins, 2010), a type of 'expert' and 'focused knowledge' that does not refer to the corpus of scientific knowledge itself but to the social and institutional system in which scientific knowledge is inserted as well as its management model.…”

“…A detailed description of the methodology used in this research has been published elsewhere (Rey-Rocha et al, 2019;González-Bravo et al, 2020). However, to facilitate the comprehension of the present article, the most relevant aspects of our method and data analysis are summarized below.…”

“…This dimension showed a correlation between choosing a scientific career and having an interest in, and feeling informed about, developments in science and technology. In this study, the question about closeness to science was inspired by social distance scales (Bogardus, 1933), as they were considered 'an indicator of cognitive and cultural distance between respondents at companies and scientists' (Rey-Rocha et al, 2019).…”