Marcson, S. (1960). The Scientist in American Industry: Some Organizational Determinants in Manpower Utilization,. Princeton, NJ, Industrial Relations Section, Princeton University.

Research chemists or physicists are usually concerned with research achievements that will bring scientific recognition. p. 5

Because of their lengthy professional training, scientists develop such needs as recognition, involvement, and self-realization. They come to respect skill and achievement, independence of the individual in his work, and colleague relationships. p. 5

The scientist, must adjust his conceptions of professional goals if he is to adjust to the industrial research laboratory. p. 6

The existence of different career ladders in the laboratory will produce strain. p. 7

One of the questions in this study is "What kinds of adjustment must be made by the professional while working in an organization with rules or norms established by non-professionals?" p. 8

Ch. II Goals of Industry & Research Components

Formal large scale work organization is a purposeful, rational entity, but much irrational behavior occurs within such purposeful organizations. Industrial laboratories are organized to utilize rationally the skilled bearers of scientific theory... but in working toward this end they exhibit behavior that is often far from rational" p. 11

How to balance the corporate goals of the research laboratory with the personal goals of the staff is a basic problem of the industrial research laboratory. p. 15

The laboratory doesn't define it's goals like the corporation does. p. 16

Laboratory managements task is to channel the creativity of its professional staff into potentially useful directions for the corporation, and encourage a highly competent scientific group. p. 17

Goals of Laboratory Scientists

Professionally oriented scientists have a scientific ethos emphasizing originality, modesty, and universality of intellectual property. An organizationally oriented scientists is more concerned with (applied) research and rising into the managerial levels of research. p. 19

III. Industrial Research Laboratory Organization

Sometimes there are difficulties in moving from one group to another. p. 26

PEC is organized into Directors, Section Heads, Group Leaders, and Tehnical Staff. p. 25

A technical staff member is usally assigned a technician. p. 27

At the initial contact, the technicians job is not defined explicitly, and he develops an impression that he will be an important addition to the laboratory. He gets a salary that after a while he may consider as low and therefore a low appreciation of him. p. 28

The functions of the technician are often determined by the orientation of his supervisor. The technicians lack of theory is the factor that inhibits their professional development. p. 28

Reward and Status

Two ways to reward is either increased rank or increased autonomy. p. 30

There is a caste chasm between technician and the other status levels. p. 30

There is also an informal status system among scientists 'nodular leadership" based on achievement. p. 32 The role is not legitimate but is influential. It is useful up the the middle range of rank or so.

Still, there is a feeling that a managerial positions are desirable and necessary at requisite points in the career of a scientist. p. 33.

IV. Laboratory Management

In PEC after the lab was formed there became a cleavage between the 'university research people" and the "development people", or the "idealists" and the "mechanics". p. 37

Middle management has shifted their views from focusing on basic research to belief that corporate goals are also important. p. 41

A section head is appointed from among the researchers, who moves into an office, gets a secretary, and stops doing his own work but spends his time establishing budgets, ordering equipment, determining personnel requirments, interviewing recruits, attending committee meetings, and supervising and consulting on research problems with members of his section. p. 45

The group leader is given responsiblity for two to five staff members, but his duties do not remove him from research entirely. He continues to spend about half his time on his own research. He serves as a liason between the group and section head. p. 45

The group leader is a crucial factor in the recruit's initiation and involvement in research in the PEC laboratory. The recruit's initial work relationship is with the group leader. It is from the group leader that he learns about the laboratory's research environment. The group leader is, therefore, of importance to the manner in which the new member relates himself to his work and the laboratory. He is also of considerable consequence the the morale of the organization. p. 46

Management's rationale for maintaining these positions on a non-formal basis is to escape the consequences of rigidity. ...However the flexibility that management had hoped for has not fully come about. As a matter of fact, its emphsis on flexisity has produced little more than a fixed-positional system without titles. The position of a section leader is in fact a permanent one. p. 46

Scientists come view members of personnel as interlopers who somehow have acquired status and power without having the necessary scientific qualifications to be issuing directives to them. p. 48

V. Career Development of Scientists

Recruitment, selection, and training "In a sense this may be described as "the problem of creating new roles in old organizations, and of coordinating them with existing roles". p. 51

1. Means of Recruitment

Recruiters talk with professors at universities and graduates soon to be graduating with PhD's. Some are invited to the site for extensive interviewing. They try to sell the recruit on the laboratory, implying how similar the work is to the graduate's own research. The recruit often expects to fulfill his expectations regarding fundamental research. p. 55

Once the recruit is hired, he is introduced to the work rules of industrial research. He is expected to be on time. There is a stated period for lunch. He adopts quickly the requirments of industrial employment. p. 57

A trainee with a BS is given three consecutive short-term assignments. PhD's begin independent research. They hope that one of the three projects for the BS hiree will suit his interests. p. 57a

... The laboratory has actually started on a program of retraining the individual to fit into the industrial laboratory, accept its goals, and contribute to them. Often it succeeds in only partly remoding his aspirations. p. 58

Expectations of the Recruit

"Every formal organization attempts to utilize its human and technical resources as a means of attaining its goals. It formulates and creates rules, written and unwritten, which are intended to designate and prescribe acceptable behavior. The organization shores up its rules and expectations with its own system of rewards and punishments. However, the individual members wha are within the organization resist being treated as a means to attain these goals. The organization's members define these expectations when they are able to discren them as pressures for conformity, but much of this they do not discern. They are therefore frequently inthe position of not know how to define the strains and conflicts they are experiencing". p. 60

The recruit is faced with problems regarding his career. What shall he do about the expectations he has brought from his training? p. 61

1. Acculturation

Laboratory management is aware that the recuit has research expectations that will have to undergo change is he is to adequately utilized by them. p. 62

The laboratory attempts to pull the recruit into its value system and redirect his research interests. p. 63 The problem is to broaden the interests of the recruit and to develp within him a devotion to the goals of the laboratory organization. In the PEC lab, the recruit workingunder a group leader develops a reputation. Because his future with the laboratory and his work satisfactions are bound up with his group, the individual develops loyality to it. He forms alliances within the working group and within his section. p. 64

The new laboratory member is constantly evaluating and ranking all those in his network of relationships. He not only ranks the others, but he also seeks some measure of his own ranking. In doing this he is engaged in internalizing the norms of his working group and the norms of the PEC laboratories.

2. Types of Career Goals

There are four paths:

1. Remain a professional scientist.

2. Move up administration ladder

3. Start in research but turn to admin when he sees limited financial and status future.

4. Turn to admin because he can't compete with colleagues in research.

From his own ability to function effectively is is important that (the employee) internalize an approximation of the view that he is working on what he really wants to.

Note: There is some info that scientific personnel receive 2/3 of their salary increase in their first 1/3 of their career.

V. Professional Needs of the Scientist

Professional needs are a product of the process, as has been pointed out, whereby the individual internalizes relevant norms in his graduate training and early occupational experience. These committ him to a scientific and professional ethos, regardless of the needs and goals of the organization. p. 72

A. Recognition

It provides the scientist with increasing independence in his work. p. 73 Their physical surroundings clearly establish the relative status of technical staff members from administrative members. p. 74

B. Involvement

The scientist in his professional role seeks equality in his colleague relations and participation in substantive decisions about his work. p. 78 Involving the scientist in his professional role in decision affecting his professional work is the most fundamental form of recognition. p. 78

C. Self-Realization

His status as a professional depends on his scientific achievements. p. 80 He has to have means to disseminate knowledge of his achievements p. 81 The notebook is a means of establishing credit. p. 81

The scientists's motivations are dependent upon the degree of satisfaction his professional needs receive. p. 84

VII. Work Groups

A scientist is first assigned to a work group.. in addition to formal work groups there emerges a network of informal groupings. These informal groupings supplement the work groups and help to get the work done. p. 87

The scientist learns who are the leading consulting scientists and establishes relationships which permit him to turn to them for advice and assistance. p. 88 He develops a kidding relationship with members of the model shop (to get his requests back without delay). He learns to participate in humorous anecdotes about accounting and personnel, and so solidifies his relationships among his colleagues. In this way he becomes part of the an informal network of working relations which help him get his work done. p. 88

VIII. Research Pathways

IX. Interpretation

Marcson defines "executive authority" and "colleague authority" and sees them as confliciting.