Effect of Publicness on Organizational Performance: A Comparative Study of R and D Laboratories

摘要

In the past, R&D laboratories have been classified as public or private. Associated with these classifications is the notion that R&D laboratories are either industrial, university or governmental. This classification system has, in turn, become an assumption for scholars, but these classifications are no longer representative of the types of R&D laboratories that have developed over the last few decades. The once clear distinction between the public and private sectors has become blurred. Thus a need for a new classification technique has developed. Developments in recent organization theory suggest the implementation of a dimensional classification technique that separates organizations according to their levels of governmental and market influence. The technique was designed to be used as a heuristic classification matrix to generate new R&D laboratory behavior theory. Implementing the heuristic classification matrix on a cross-section of R&D laboratories revealed the expected results and several hypotheses were generated from the results. Most important among Most important among these new hypotheses is the indication that R&D laboratory behavior appears to be a function of the type of influences affecting the organization and not sector status.