An exploratory study on contingency factors affecting R&D performance measurement

Abstract

Purpose To explore the effects of contingency and the position of R&D professionals on R&D performance measurement. Design/methodology/approach Adopting a bottom‐up approach that reflects R&D professionals' opinion, this study investigated the relationship between preferred performance measures and contingency factors (project phase, structure, technology, and the position of R&D professionals). Fifty two senior researchers at a Korean telecommunications laboratory were surveyed. Findings The results suggest that the goal achievement dimension and technology factors are more important in earlier phases of an R&D project while production, economy/market, and external evaluation factors become more significant in later stages. Practical implications The findings suggest that the weights of R&D performance measures should be aligned with the contingency factors and the position of R&D professionals. Originality/value While most studies have adopted a macro‐level approach, this study examined R&D performance measurement at the micro‐level. While most previous works are conceptual, this study made an empirical investigation that enables statistical tests. And the findings provide useful recommendations for human resource managers who are interested in measuring the performance of technology innovation.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 17 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.