ABSTRACT
This chapter considers that much academic social science which dealt with unhappy industrial scientists was in large part deducing its objects from theory. The scientist in industry, or in the military, would be an unhappy, awkward and possibly even a disloyal figure, in constant conflict with commercial values and organizational structures. In the Cold War context, while academic social scientists elaborated a picture of the industrial scientist made-unhappy-through-early-socialization, they had allies in university departments of industrial relations and in business schools, as well as in strands of non-academic cultural commentary. Moreover, the cultural and political conjunctures from which academic commentary emerged had characteristics that made the story about role-conflict especially appealing to American social scientists and humanists. Role-conflict was naturalized by some sociologists as a feature of the academic identity, whether humanist, social scientist, or natural scientist.
