Biographical Pathways to Dominance in Scientific Fields: Locating Professors' Trajectories in the Swiss Field of Economic Sciences

Abstract

From a field perspective, individuals follow biographical trajectories, which let them accumulate and convert resources. These pathways are even more institutionalised and predictable as the field's autonomy is high. Economic sciences have been depicted as highly autonomous. However, studies have also demonstrated an important diversity in economists' careers in and out of academia. This article aims to explore this tension, thanks to systematic information on the careers of all professors of economics and business sciences in Swiss universities in 2000 (n=261). For such a task, we use an original combination of methods - multi-channel sequence analysis, cluster analysis, and multiple correspondence analysis - which allows us to link biographical trajectories with the hierarchy of positions in this field. First, we focus on these professors' professional pathways through four dimensions: within universities, outside academia, at the international level, and within research collaborations. Second, we measure the extent to which specific types of professors' trajectories associate with different resource endowment within the Swiss field of economic sciences. We show that "seniority" in Swiss academia (short international stays and short extra-academic careers), institutional experiences (mid-career accession to academic executive positions), and scientific networks (mid-career investments in research collaborations and PhD supervision of future elite members) are strongly associated with a high volume of resources. We also stress that rapid accessions to a full professorship are typical of professors who correspond to the scientific pole of the field (i.e., the pole that most strongly reflects logics from the scientific field), while slower paces relate to its society pole (i.e., the pole closer to the illusio of other fields and the field of power). Besides its empirical contribution to the study of economic sciences, this article emphasises the importance of investigating the multiple dimensions of biographical temporalities within fields by leveraging an original quantitative methodology.