Conceptions of research and development work and competence in a high-tech entrepreneurial organization
Abstract
High-tech entrepreneurial organizations rely on cutting-edge Research and Development (R&D) work to maintain a competitive advantage. These organizations have a vested interest in developing competent R&D practitioners, because human capital is considered a source of strategic advantage in today’s global business environment. Competence is associated with a wide variety of meanings and goals in an organization, which limits its potential use as a tool for efficiently developing talent toward organizational goals. Small entrepreneurial organizations often lack research support to identify effective training and development practices. Furthermore, the nature of R&D work in high-tech entrepreneurial organizations is changing rapidly due to societal and technological forces. To enhance understanding of these issues, this study investigated the conceptions of R&D work and competence from the perspectives of practitioners in a high-tech entrepreneurial organization. Specifically, the focus of this study was exploring the variation in the ways of experiencing R&D work, and describing competence in R&D work from an interpretive approach based on the variation of R&D experiences. A qualitative research tradition, phenomenography, was used as the guiding methodological framework for the study. Semi-structured interviews with thirteen R&D practitioners from a high-tech entrepreneurial organization comprised the data that was analyzed to generate outcomes. This analysis yielded four qualitatively different categories of description that represented the variation in the ways of experiencing R&D work. These categories represented R&D work as: (1) Experiential Learning for Self-Enrichment, (2) Optimized Development under Constraints, (3) Maintaining Balance between Interacting Systems, and (4) Customer Driven. The categories of description were logically related to each other in the form of a branched hierarchy indicating less comprehensive to more comprehensive ways of experiencing R&D work. Further analysis revealed a specific combination of key aspects of competence within each category of description, resulting in four distinct structures of competence in R&D work. The results of this study lay the groundwork for a greater awareness of R&D work in a high-tech entrepreneurial organization, and can potentially inform R&D policies. The results also revealed the interpretive understanding of competence in R&D work that can inform human resource management practices such as training and development. Finally, the results contribute to designing authentic learning experiences for the next generation of R&D practitioners.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Brophy, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Entrepreneurship|Industrial engineering
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