Tacit Contributions and Roles of Senior Researchers: Experiences of a Multinational Company
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
2.1. Age and Individual Productivity
2.2. Age and Firm-Level Productivity
2.3. Tacit Contributions of Senior Inventors
2.4. Role of Senior Researchers
3. Materials and Methods
4. Results and Discussion
4.1. Scientific Productivity along the Professional Career
4.2. Tacit Contributions of Senior Researchers
“[Senior researchers] have a lot of knowledge and work with so many subjects.”(Interview number 4)
“[Senior researchers] can avoid reinventing the wheel: that’s also something I’ve faced with [young] people coming with a good idea, but such an idea has been already known for 20 years in another domain or in another lab, and they are reinventing the wheel. With more experienced people, they know what the real level of prior art is, not only inside the organisation, but outside as well.”(Interview number 6)
4.3. Roles of Senior Researchers
5. Challenges around Senior Researchers
“A person in R&D has different needs than somebody with a different vocation: having the freedom to investigate and to search, to increase his knowledge and to open new lines of work, are subjects that R&D people value more than those in other sectors.”(Interview number 8)
“Regarding money, after a certain limit where you cover all your needs, other factors enter to fill the job satisfaction, as an example, some work that becomes technically interesting.”(Interview number 2)
“Even if it is a difficult duty to be performed by the researchers in the organisation, there should exist a task that consists of generating research management structures in inter-generational teams, so that any [knowledge] transfer is done naturally and not within a month of departure notice [in the case of retirement or job change], in which is impossible to share a whole working life or long years of work”(Interview number 1)
6. Conclusions and Future Research
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Interview Number | Age | Sex | Professional Experience | Career | Scientific Productivity |
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1 | 46–50 | M | 21–25 | Researcher-R&D manager | Decreasing |
2 | 51–55 | F | 21–25 | Researcher-R&D manager | Decreasing |
3 | 46–50 | M | 21–25 | Researcher-R&D manager | Decreasing |
4 | 36–40 | M | 5–10 | Researcher | Decreasing |
5 | 51–55 | M | 31–35 | Researcher-R&D manager | Decreasing |
6 | 51–55 | F | 26–30 | R&D manager | - |
7 | 41–45 | M | 16–20 | Professional-Researcher | Constant |
8 | 36–40 | M | 11–15 | Researcher | Concentrated |
9 | 41–45 | M | 11–15 | Researcher | Concentrated |
10 | 41–45 | M | 21–25 | Professional-Researcher | Concentrated |
11 | 41–45 | M | 16–20 | Researcher | Concentrated |
Personal Motivations | Organisational Motivations |
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Specific Competencies of Senior Researchers in an Industrial Organisation | |
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Roles of Senior Researchers in an Industrial Organisation | |
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Pérez Villa, W.; Pérez-Ezcurdia, A.; Vigil Berrocal, M.A. Tacit Contributions and Roles of Senior Researchers: Experiences of a Multinational Company. Adm. Sci. 2022, 12, 192. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci12040192
Pérez Villa W, Pérez-Ezcurdia A, Vigil Berrocal MA. Tacit Contributions and Roles of Senior Researchers: Experiences of a Multinational Company. Administrative Sciences. 2022; 12(4):192. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci12040192
Chicago/Turabian StylePérez Villa, Walter, Amaya Pérez-Ezcurdia, and Miguel Angel Vigil Berrocal. 2022. "Tacit Contributions and Roles of Senior Researchers: Experiences of a Multinational Company" Administrative Sciences 12, no. 4: 192. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci12040192