Between Autonomy and Control: The role of industrial researchers’ decision-making

Kenneth Husted
Additional contact information
Kenneth Husted: Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Postal: Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Blaagaardsgade 23 B, DK-2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark

No 11/1999, Working Papers from Copenhagen Business School, Department of Management, Politics & Philosophy

Abstract: This paper deals with issues related to management of industrial research. The

overall research question is how industrial researchers can be managed to

increase the company’s benefits. The relevance of this question is put into

perspective by two main considerations. On the one hand, it is widely recognized

that individual researchers should possess a high level of autonomy to preserve

the ability of research to renew itself. On the other hand, companies need to

maintain control over that freedom to develop their research activities in a long-term

company perspective.

The paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the management of industrial

research by moving the focus from risk management and portfolio planning

(decision and control based management) to management in situations marked by

high uncertainty and asymmetric distribution of information (management of

self-governing systems). More specifically, the evolutionary perspective on

individual adaptation is used in combination with evolutionary economics to

create an analytical framework for understanding managerial action in industrial

research. This framework, is used to explain how managers can try to increase

the probability that individual research processes create results, which eventually

increase the fit of the company to its environment. It is argued that research

managers can, to a certain extent, influence the complex processes of individual

adaptation by influencing individual decision making through a) setting and

communicating research specific goals and b) creating and maintaining shared

cognitive frames.

Keywords: Autonomy; Control; Industrial research; Decision-making; Research management; Managment of industrial research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm
Date: 1999-10-01
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cbs.dk/de ... p/diverse/wp1199.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

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

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Copenhagen Business School, Department of Management, Politics & Philosophy
Address: Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Blaagaardsgade 23 B, DK-2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Lars Nondal ().