About this issue

One of the most discussed and philosophized-about processes of management — especially the management of technical functions such as Research, Development, and Engineering (R, D, &E) — is “communication.” In addition to the philosophizing, however, there has also been a great deal of measurement of various aspects of the communication process, as illustrated by the Connolly article and the article by Taylor and Utterback. There is, however, a very large application gap, in terms of using the results of the many completed communication studies in designing and operating R, D, &E organizations. Most of the studies reported in the literature (many of them in these Transactions over the past two decades) are based on specially-focused studies of one or a few organizations, except for the multi-organizational surveys. Therefore, like any research findings, they require adaptation and probably some further “development” before they can be applied in a specific operating organization. However, much of the data and results in this literature do have strong implications for management practice and it is a pity that more operating managements have not made systematic attempts to use them in design, redesign, or management of their R, D, &E organizations. Certainly, some of the “communication” problems encountered in any organization will appear unique — due to the particular personalities and situations involved in that organization at that time. Given that degree of uniqueness, there is still much in the communication literature that the practitioner of R, D, &E management can profitably adapt to his own situation. We would be very interested in reporting, as technical articles or “technical and management notes,” attempts by managers to do this, whether they are successful or not. Duersch´s article on a business simulation is one of a growing number of a- tempts to systematically capture the dominant economic and other features of a company´s operating environment and to deal with the inherent uncertainty by the potentially powerful methods of simulation. Again, it could be a worthwhile exercise for managers to attempt to formulate a simulation model of their own organization´s environmental and management strategies. In some cases, even the early steps of the simulation — developing a crude flow model — can lead to useful insights and, perhaps, suggest beneficial policy changes. Another general method of “simulation,” this time of future technological developments, is presented by Sahal. Although this is not a simulation in the same sense as Duersch´s, the methodology can also be used for purposes of planning and strategy development.