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Demography and design in an R&D organization / Demography and design in a research and development organization

Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-70). / In the research and development (R&D) organization of a firm in a high technology industry, because of the needs for innovative and complex tasks in the rapidly changing environment of technology and market, the design of efficient organization would be one of the most important things. Many researchers have concentrated on the questions: How should teams or unit organizations be organized in terms of demographic diversity? What are the key variables associated with better performance? More technically, should a functional team be formed by the people who have similar experience and tenure, or, alternatively, should it be composed of people with a wide range of demographic characteristics? In this perspective, using the data collected from the 31 project teams and 191 individuals at four corporate-level research and development laboratories at a global electronics company in Korea, this study investigates the impact of demography diversity on project team performance. Particularly, this study moves beyond previous research by broadening the demographic variables to the education characteristics such as major, school, and educational level as a group. The results of the study suggest that, like the other demographic variables, the educational background also is strongly related to the team level performance. While each demographic variable has a certain operating direction, in this unique organization, the more homogeneous team in terms of diversity of school is likely to have better performance through the group process. / by Myung-Jin Soh. / S.M.M.O.T.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:MIT/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/8919
Date January 2001
CreatorsSoh, Myung-Jin, 1958-
ContributorsM. Diane Burton., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Management of Technology Program., Management of Technology Program., Sloan School of Management
PublisherMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Source SetsM.I.T. Theses and Dissertation
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Format70 leaves, 5549506 bytes, 5549260 bytes, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf
RightsM.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission., http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

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