Browsing by Author "Falkingham, Leslie T."

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    Context analysis - A technique for analysing research in a field, applied to literature on the management of R & D at the section level
    (Cranfield School of Management, 1997) Falkingham, Leslie T.; Reeves, Richard
    Context Analysis is a new method for surveying a body of publications as a whole. The process consists of creating a database of information about the publications in a field of study and then looking for interesting relationships in the data. This paper presents our findings about one particular research field, Management of R&D at the Section Level. We investigated how the research activity is related to practitioner needs in this field and found evidence to support the views that the literature in this field provides a forum for debate rather than for the reporting of formal research, and that the publications generally conform to a different assumption about the nature of the R&D process than that held by practising R&D managers. We obtained confirmation of our allocation of facts and judgements about papers by sending a questionnaire to the authors of the papers. The paper discusses practical aspects of how to apply the method in other fields, and suggests that the method might be useful in informing the strategies of researchers and funders of research.
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    The four schools of thought in research and development management and the relationship of the literature to practitioners' needs
    (Cranfield School of Management, 1997) Falkingham, Leslie T.; Reeves, Richard
    Abstract We have found that publications in the literature on R&D management can be classified according to four different forms of reasoning about the R&D process, which we call schools of thought. We have also found that managers of research subscribe to the same four forms of reasoning. The fact that managers unconsciously think in one of four different ways about R&D management explains some of the problems that occur in practice. A preponderance of publications favour one school of thought, whereas a preponderance of practical managers favour a different one. This raises a doubt about the degree to which the published papers meet practitioners' perceived needs.
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    A study of the strategic environment of an R&D section within a larger organisation
    (Cranfield University, 2001-04) Falkingham, Leslie T.
    This work addresses the problem of how an R&D section should decide on a strategy to guide its work when there is no strategic direction supplied from above by the company. The work includes a participant observer case study carried out over five years in a single R&D section, an analysis of research papers on the subject of management of section level R&D, and a review of textbooks on strategy, management and organisational behaviour. From the case study it was concluded that the company itself formed the strategic environment which the strategy of the R&D section had to address, and that the section’s strategic environment was chaotic in the mathematical sense. From the review of management textbooks it was concluded that standard theories do not give usable guidelines for the manager in this situation. A theory was developed that R&D strategy can be thought about in four distinctly different ways. Publications concentrate on two of these, while the case study and surveys of practising managers revealed that the other two were more pertinent in practice. The analysis of research papers was carried out using a newly developed technique, which showed that this body of literature is in a pre-paradigm state. The new technique was also used to show that the four different ways of thinking about R&D are present in the papers. The new literature analysis technique and the theory that R&D strategy can be thought about in four different way were tested by means of questionnaires filled in by authors of papers and by groups of R&D practitioners.