Industrial Scientists: New Challenges with Restructuring

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Since the mid-1980s, industrial R&D has been going through major changes, including a decline in industrial R&D expenditures and restructuring of centralized corporate R&D laboratories. With these changes have come changes in the models used to describe and explain the relationship between corporate goals and industrial science. Formerly, corporate R&D managers and analysts viewed economic gains as a by-product of research, under an autonomous model. Currently, a new linkage model of corporate R&D, which directly links research to the needs of business divisions of the company, is being put into practice. These developments bring new relevance to the following two questions: How does restructuring in corporate R&D affect scientists? How are scientists accommodating changes brought by restructuring? This project proposes to study both questions by conducting interviews with approximately 96 subjects: 80 scientists and 16 managers working in 8 corporate R&D labs that have recently experienced restructuring. The focus in the investigation would be three aspects of the impact of restructuring on scientists: research conditions, research types, and research environments. This research has theoretical and practical relevance. It will show the strengths and limitations of the existing literature on industrial research scientists by presenting scientists' understanding of their careers and the ways in which they are affected by structural and organizational changes. It will identify key features of the new research culture and values evolving in corporate R&D to which scientists have to adjust. By considering these factors in relationship to the autonomous and linkage models, a new partnership model may be proposed that can address concerns and issues overlooked by both the other models.