Arie Rip

A powerful set of projections has constructed post-apartheid higher education in South Africa. Among these is the expectation that technikons (institutions similar to the British polytechnics) would become universities of technology, with a mission to drive the technology of national reconstruction and development. In this paper, one of the new universities of technology serves as a case study to explore organizational structure and to highlight the ethics of university management and leadership. Building a new university provides the opportunity to place ethics “upfront”, rather than as an afterthought, by constructing an organizational framework that makes ethical issues integral to management and decision-making processes. In imagining the structure of a university of technology, the authors were inspired by future scripting methods developed by Bastiaan De Laat, and by Duncan Den Boer, Arie Rip and Sandra Speller. The research process firstly involved the identification of themes related to values and ethics through an analysis of the environment. These themes were incorporated into three scenarios of possible futures for this new university type. Using these scenarios, the ethical issues that emerged (according to how the university of technology might choose to organise itself), are compared with the original themes. Conclusions are then drawn with regard to management structures that are hierarchical and entrench compliance, or that are traditionally collegiate and expertise-based, or that might enable mutual appreciation and allow for leaders to emerge within any functional space at a university of technology.

In this interview, Arie Rip talks to Jane Calvert about his life in STS and the history and future of the field. He begins in the late 1960s, when he started teaching a course in “chemistry and society.” He then gives a first-hand account of the formation of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S), and the growth of research in the “melting pot” that STS became. He goes on to discuss recent work on new and emerging technologies and responsible research and innovation. His narrative shows the connections, historically and in the present, between the different strands of STS, including sociological work, science policy and innovation studies. He argues that we are seeing a “mainstreaming” of STS as it permeates other academic disciplines and arenas such as government agencies and charities. He suggests that this mainstreaming may mean STS will disappear as an independent discipline. In her reflection following the interview, Jane Calvert focuses on Rip’s point that STS is both a social movement and an academic discipline. She argues that this raises questions about what type of work we want to do as STS researchers, and how much freedom we have to choose.