Industrial Scientists: New Challenges with Restructuring

自1980年代中期以来，工业研究与开发经历了重大变化，包括工业研究与开发支出的减少和企业研究与开发实验室的集中重组。 随着这些变化，用来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，将研究与公司业务部门的需求直接联系起来的新的企业研发联系模式正在付诸实施。 这些发展带来了新的相关性，以下两个问题：如何重组企业的R D影响科学家？ 科学家如何适应重组带来的变化？ 本项目建议通过对大约96名受试者进行访谈来研究这两个问题：80名科学家和16名管理人员在8个最近经历过重组的公司研发实验室工作。 研究的重点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。 它将通过介绍科学家对他们的职业生涯的理解以及他们受到结构和组织变化影响的方式，展示现有文献对工业研究科学家的优势和局限性。 它将确定新的研究文化和价值观的关键特征，在企业的研发，科学家必须调整。 考虑到这些因素与自主模式和联系模式的关系，可以提出一种新的伙伴关系模式，解决其他两种模式所忽视的关切和问题。

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.