On the factors influencing R&D efforts of manufacturing organizations — A new paradigm

In developing countries like India, the subject of indigenous R&D versus importation of technology is always much discussed. It is, therefore, desirable for national R&D policy makers to know just how much R&D a company may be reasonably expected to undertake. In this paper, we attempted to provide an approach for determining “reasonable amount of R&D effort” the manufacturing organizations should make in a given environment. These organizations are considered as systems, open to the influences of the environment in which they exist and use R&D as one of the means of adaptation to changes in the environment. Each of the relevant environmental factors is defined, detailed, and presented on a continuum. The paradigm presented leads to a conceptually simple method similar to that of job evaluation to arrive at the “reasonable R&D expenditure levels.”