Industrial Scientists: New Challenges with Restructuring

工业科学家：重组的新挑战

• 批准号: 9602200
• 负责人: Roli Varma
• 金额: $ 5.5万
• 依托单位: Individual Award
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1996
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1996-09-01 至 1998-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9602200&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Industrial; Scientists; New; Challenges; Restructuring

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.

自20世纪80年代中期以来，工业研发一直在经历重大变化，包括工业研发支出的下降和集中的企业研发实验室的重组。随着这些变化，用于描述和解释企业目标与工业科学之间关系的模型也发生了变化。以前，企业研发经理和分析师将经济收益视为自主模式下研究的副产品。目前，一种新的企业研发联动模式正在付诸实施，这种模式将研究与公司各业务部门的需求直接联系起来。这些发展给以下两个问题带来了新的相关性：公司研发的重组如何影响科学家？科学家如何适应结构调整带来的变化？这个项目建议通过对大约96个主题进行访谈来研究这两个问题：80名科学家和16名管理人员，他们在8个最近经历过重组的公司研发实验室工作。调查的重点将是结构调整对科学家的影响的三个方面：研究条件、研究类型和研究环境。本研究具有理论和实践意义。它将通过展示科学家对其职业的理解以及他们受到结构和组织变化影响的方式来展示现有关于工业研究科学家的文献的优势和局限性。它将确定新的研究文化的关键特征，以及科学家必须适应的企业研发中不断发展的价值观。通过考虑这些因素与自治模型和关联模型之间的关系，可以提出一种新的伙伴关系模型，该模型可以解决其他两种模型所忽略的问题。