Abstract
The research compares the influence of self-efficacy, organizational socialization and continuous improvement practices on career aspirations of research and development (R&D) professionals of government research institutes (GRIs) and multinational corporations (MNCs) in Malaysia. This study used Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) to examine the influence of the selected variables on career aspirations of the R&D professionals. Data were collected from 164 respondents from GRIs and 120 respondents from MNCs in the country. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple linear regressions. The two groups differed significantly in terms of their levels of self-efficacy and organizational socialization, and were not significantly different in continuous improvement practices and career aspirations. Self-efficacy and organizational socialization levels of R&D professionals in GRIs were found to be slightly higher than those of MNCs. Regression results showed MNCs reported higher explanatory power compared to that of the GRIs in terms of variance in career aspiration. This study suggests that continuous improvement practices and self-efficacy are relevant to the model of SCCT. Managers and human resource development (HRD) practitioners in both types of organizations need to restructure the work practices of R&D professionals by strengthening the quality improvement work procedures and cognitive-behaviour initiatives.
Highlights
Managing careers of research and development (R&D) professionals is becoming more complex due to several reasons: i) R&D professionals are associated with multi-faceted tasks and this resulted in diversity in their career route preferences such as technical, managerial, project to project and entrepreneurial paths (Petroni, 2000; Ferrary, 2008); ii) the emergence of the concept of protean career in which the entire responsibility of career management is more on the individuals rather than the organizations
While in multinational corporations (MNCs) the average age was 31.26 with a similar age range. This implied the distribution of R&D professionals in MNCs was more towards the younger group of professionals compared to those in the government research institutes (GRIs)
Continuous improvement practices were found to be the strongest predictors of career aspiration in both types of R&D organization, with the magnitude in MNCs higher than that in GRIs
Summary
Managing careers of research and development (R&D) professionals is becoming more complex due to several reasons: i) R&D professionals are associated with multi-faceted tasks and this resulted in diversity in their career route preferences such as technical, managerial, project to project and entrepreneurial paths (Petroni, 2000; Ferrary, 2008); ii) the emergence of the concept of protean career in which the entire responsibility of career management is more on the individuals rather than the organizations.
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