Publication Date:
2016-06-16
Description:
We explore the impact of organizational size in six federally funded research organizations on a range of organizational processes related to the pursuit of innovation. The data utilized consisted of 266 scientists drawn from 64 research projects across five programmatic research areas: alternative energies, biology, chemistry, geophysical sciences, and material sciences. A sixth project category was added to accommodate the highly interdisciplinary character of a handful of projects. Although the data had some limitations, it was found that organizational size had a negative impact on three categories of innovation processes: the amount of time spent in research and professional activities, how research time is spent, and exchanges of technical knowledge. In addition, some potential advantages of larger size, such as: greater research resources, better perceived managerial quality or a visionary strategy, were not found to be significant.
Print ISSN:
0302-3427
Electronic ISSN:
1471-5430
Topics:
Nature of Science, Research, Systems of Higher Education, Museum Science
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