Ethical implications of for-profit corporate sponsorship of research

Academic institutions and commercial companies both recognize the need for the United States to enhance its economic competitiveness worldwide. Improved trading status is linked, in part, to education and to research and development (R&D) as cooperative efforts between nonprofit colleges and universities and for-profit corporations. As more and more colleges and universities seek for-profit corporate sponsors for their research programs, their collaboration may be complicated by several ethical issues. Most of these issues arise because of the differences between academic and corporate missions. This paper emphasizes that these differences are not irreconcilable; indeed, there are many successful research partnerships between academia and for-profit corporations. With a solid understanding of each partner's mission, productive corporate sponsorship of academic research is possible.