Managing Research, Development, and Innovation: Managing the Unmanageable, Third Edition

4.3. CAREER PATHS

In designing jobs, it is also desirable to think of the total career path of the scientists. One of the problems in a research and development setting is that there are not sufficient opportunities to reach the top of the organization in terms of pay and prestige for those engaged in purely technical activities. The jobs are designed in such a way that administrators receive higher compensation, but this is inconsistent with many of the values and needs of technically gifted individuals. To the extent that the engineer or the scientist is dissatisfied with the job definition, he or she is more likely to turn to other sources of satisfaction—for example, family or civic matters. There is evidence (Bailyn and Lynch, 1983) that ...