Motives to Publish, to Patent and to Standardize: An Explorative Study Based on Individual Engineers’ Assessments

Knut Blind, Ellen Filipović and Luisa K. Lazina

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2022, vol. 175, issue C

Abstract: This paper employs the concept of ‘Gold’ (financial rewards), ‘Ribbon’ (reputational/career rewards) and ‘Puzzle’ (intrinsic satisfaction) to structure engineers’ motivation for pursuing scientific publications, patenting and contributing to standardization. This study is based on the responses to a survey of engineers employed by two German Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) active in the automotive sector. Based on three explorative factor analyses, we identify in the first step factors of motives related to publishing, patenting and standardization. In the second step, we assign these factors to the three categories ‘Gold’, ‘Ribbon’ and ‘Puzzle’. We find that the engineers surveyed assign a lower overall importance to career rewards and reputation and a higher importance to intrinsic satisfaction, while financial rewards are of lower importance, in general, and not at all relevant for contributions to standardization. In comparing these motivations with the drivers for researchers in public research organizations, we identify the role of regulatory framework conditions and intra-organizational structures in particular for researchers' intrinsic motivations. Finally, we derive some implications for companies’, but also public research organizations’ incentives and support schemes focusing on researchers.

Keywords: scientific publications; patenting; standardization; industrial researchers; automotive research; motivational research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162521008519
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:tefoso:v:175:y:2022:i:c:s0040162521008519

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121420

Access Statistics for this article

Technological Forecasting and Social Change is currently edited by Fred Phillips

More articles in Technological Forecasting and Social Change from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().