Workforce Composition of Public R&D and Performance: Evidence from Korean Government-Funded Research Institutes

Sangyun Han, Soo Kyung Park and Kyu Tae Kwak
Additional contact information
Sangyun Han: Department of International Commerce, Daejeon University, Daejeon 34520, Korea
Soo Kyung Park: Graduate School of Information, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Korea
Kyu Tae Kwak: Department of Global Culture Industry, Soonchunhyang University, Asan 31538, Korea

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 7, 1-17

Abstract: How do the organizational attributes of public R&D organizations affect their performance? Recent researchers have focused on the relationship between R&D investments and performance or efficiency, and others suggest that performance may be affected by organizational factors. However, we focus on the attributes of R&D workforce excellence and diversity of R&D workforce, which can affect the performance of public R&D organizations. Therefore, we conduct a panel negative binomial regression and a focus group interview after empirical analysis to derive interpretations and implications. The results show that the effects of the diversity and excellence of an R&D workforce can vary depending on the type of performance: scientific, technological, or social. Overall, we call for a human resources and resource-based approach to consider the importance of R&D workforce composition, specifically diversity and excellence, in evaluating the performance of public R&D organizations.

Keywords: workforce composition; public R&D; performance; government-funded research institutes; resource-based view (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/7/3789/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/7/3789/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:7:p:3789-:d:526217

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().