About this issue

Abstract

Three “hot topics” in the management of Research, Development, and Engineering (RD&E) are the focii of the papers in this issue. All three, on a general level, concern the vitality of technology groups (R&D, engineering, product development) in a company and their ability to mount and sustain effective innovation and routine technology operations. Parden deals with the turnover that is endemic in the electronics industry and is, in some sectors and geographical regions, becoming worse. To some extent, this appears to be a simple matter of supply and demand too many jobs chasing too few qualified people. On closer examination, however, it is much more complex. Although many of the engineers and scientists involved in job changing or its extreme form job hopping do appear to be getting more money as they move from one company to another, many other factors are at work in motivating and facilitating or forcing their job mobility. Parden's paper explores some of these other factors, related to organizational environment and individual career aspirations, through a brief survey. Other investigators are attempting to probe more deeply into both these global factors and trying to find “root causes” or, at least, significant contributing cause s. One of the tracks being followed is related to career and personal expectations which have been raised among some students and professionals in the RD&E community about their worth as people, and organization members, and contributors to their technical fields, as compared to “workers filling a slot.” In our own studies of the “recruiting” problem in the exploding computer science field, we find many disappointments and unrealistic expectations contributing to the churning of people in the field, leading to either high turnover of key people, or perhaps worse, resignation of not-so-key people to staying but not giving as much of themselves as they might. All RD&E organizations cannot provide “optimum” conditions for all levels of their staff, but it is clear that many such organizations are not trying very hard to find out the causes of turnover (and underlying dissatisfaction).