The Effects of Leadership Characteristics on the Performance of R&D Projects

Existing research in R&D performance have mainly focused on the effects of funding, research fields and/or regional R&D networks on the performance of R&D projects. In this paper, we argue that, if we take micro-level variables into consideration, project leadership may be much more influential than any other environmental variables. The current study is designed to explore the effects of the characteristics of project leaders or research teams on R&D performance, based on R&D performance records of individual laboratories, which take part in the National Research Laboratory (NRL) program. To test the model, we take a look at the effects of leadership on the performance of participating research labs. Some of the indicators of R&D leadership characteristics include educational level of project leaders/research team, team size, age, foreign doctor, and individual R&D networks. The results bear interesting policy implications and provide guidelines for selecting research labs for national R&D programs