Changing Research Cultures in U.S. Industry

Abstract

Changes brought by the rise of the global economy and the end of the Cold War era have resulted in industry, government, and university rethinking their roles vis-à-vis research and development (R&D), basic versus applied research, and the role of corporate research. Since the mid-1980s, industrial research in the United States has been going through restructuring. Interviews with seventy-two scientists and eighteen managers working in six centralized corporate R&D laboratories in high-technology industry show that a new culture of dependence with a mission-oriented approach is replacing the cherished culture of independence with a result-oriented approach.