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Current Trends and Issues in RESEARCH and Its MANAGEMENT

Article  in  Chiang Mai Journal of Science · September 2010

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Chiang Mai J. Sci. 2010; 37(3) i

OPINION
Chiang Mai J. Sci. 2010; 37(3) : i-vi
www.science.cmu.ac.th/journal-science/josci.html

Current Trends and Issues in

RESEARCH and Its MANAGEMENT
Lalit K. Sharma

The general problem besetting research management was clearly stated many years ago as:

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success
than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the inventor has for enemies all those
who have done well under the old condition, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.”
Modern times have seen this problem compounded by a number of factors: the use of
muddled language to describe research objectives and scenarios; research funding driven by
current social issues and political environment; counterproductive research management policies;
lack of commitment to sustained research funding; and unfavourable financial conditions.
These impediments to better scientific research are the subject of my present OPINION
article.
In fact, we badly need clear statements about the conduct of research. With an output
that cannot be described in advance because it does not yet exist, how can research organisations
present rational purposes, strategies and tactics? With the “rule of tens” operating, so that
about 90% of the research activities of a research organisation produce results that are not
substantially edifying or useful, how can you convince people that the organisation is adequately
productive before the fact? Why should research be done? Out of an infinite number of
possibilities, which should be pursued? Who should pursue them? How should they be pursued
to maximize output? These questions and more always bother research managers.
One feature of the research process is that it condenses a large amount of activity. This is
true not just for inventions but also for other forms of output such as prototypes, papers and
lectures. A corollary is that the research process costs a lot, although this is not commonly
recognised. This implies that effective management is very important for maintaining a
competitive position. Another corollary is that research activity is a measure of research
productivity. Real output is the only good measure, yet standard methods for managing the
“performance” of researchers tend to emphasize activities.

Prof. Sharma is an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Botswana (Southern Africa).
He received his Master’s degree from Rajasthan University, India, and his PhD degree in Theoretical Physics
from the APS University, India. His research focus is in Quantum Mechanics and Particle Physics theory. He
has published more than 90 research papers in his field of expertise and has supervised 10 doctoral theses.
ii Chiang Mai J. Sci. 2010; 37(3)

Functions of Research
Terminology in research management is confusing at times, beginning with the coupling
of the words “research” and “development”. The functions that these words represent are
like oil and vinegar: both are necessary ingredients in a typical “salad” but they do not mix.
Their purposes and underlying value additions are different – people who are good at one
often do not perform well at the other. In addition, the budgetary priorities are based on
completely different objectives. Citing them as a couplet is inappropriate and often does not
do justice to the “research” component (another analogous example is the coupling of the
words “science” and “technology”).1
What about “research” by itself ? The word is probably best defined in terms of the
output it produces, which may range from the sublime to the ordinary. The output may be
novel philosophy, science, invention, exploration, design, measurement, or marketing.
The definitional difficulty indicates why there are communication problems between researchers
in different communities, especially between those in academia and industry. Although the
name is the same in both communities, the content of research activity is different. The difference
is centered on the fact that different values dominate academia and industry for obvious
reasons.
From the viewpoint of the larger society, the broad purpose of research is the creation of
new assets that, hopefully, add strategic or tactical value to the society. These range in characteristics
from intangible or abstract systems to highly tangible tools, hardware to software, medical
techniques to consumer products. The assets may be consumed or used to organise
knowledge, to develop still newer products, to make processes more efficient, to improve the
productivity of people, to trade with other organisations, or to do more sophisticated
research and so on.
Another viewpoint held by many researchers is that research is “the glorious
entertainment”, a purpose in itself.2 Because the notion that others should fund your
entertainment is elitist, this purpose is not often stated explicitly. Instead it is shrouded with
irrelevant cultural or potential technological values. While acting as entertainment,
research sometimes produces side effects that prove to be important to the society at large.
But when it acts simply as entertainment, who should pay for it? The entertainers? Patrons?
The taxpayers?
As mentioned above, the values underlying academic and industrial research are markedly
different. Academic research aims to relate phenomena to one another to form patterns.
This requires analysis and is closely related to the teaching functions of academic institutions.
Without relational patterns of phenomena to condense myriad facts, it would be virtually
impossible to pass comprehensive knowledge from one generation to the next. Relational
patterns-theories are also very useful for design work, data management, guiding future research
and so on. Finding relational patterns is not the only concern of academic research, but it is the
principal one.
In contrast, the primary aim of industrial research is synthesis, manifested in the invention
of new techniques, materials, devices or systems. Not all inventions are of interest and the
ones that are should have a potential for substantial economic usefulness (popularly called
“market-driven research”). Sometimes a synthesis or the invention can be accomplished
through pure thought. More often than not, invention involves systematic, intelligent
experimentation together with “accidental” discoveries. Analysis plays a role as well, but not
the primary role.

Rationale for Research

Privately funded research needs no justification provided it stays within the bounds of
elementary ethics. But when research is done on a large scale using other people’s money, it is
appropriate to ask: “Why do it?”.
Chiang Mai J. Sci. 2010; 37(3) iii

Finding simple cause and effect relationships between doing research and realizing its
benefits is extraordinarily difficult because of the large amount of time that often elapses
between the two. Also, it must be noted that much research – roughly 90% – does not lead to
recognisable benefits.
The first sizeable, organised effort to do industrially oriented research was that of Thomas
Edision 3 (others have claimed the distinction 4, but their cases are weak.) The Edison organisation
was extraordinarily successful. It not only invented new technologies but also established new
businesses and made some purely scientific discoveries. Among its successes were incandescent
electric lamps, central electricity generation and distribution systems, practical telephone
transducers, motion picture systems and phonographs. The assets and income generated by
these developments dwarfed the original research costs. This left little doubt about the answer
to the question “Why do it?” at the time.
Later, a similar sequence of events occurred in the chemical industry, especially at the
Du Pont Company which converted itself from a narrowly-based explosives manufacturer
into a broadly-based and very large chemical company through the development of its own
inventions as well as the acquisition of inventions from others.5
In addition to such general observations, there is a statistical observation that connects
research with benefits. Take for example 100 companies that spend the most on research. It
has been shown by this statistical analysis that the relative values of the companies in this
diverse group (as measured by their Price/Earnings and Price/Sales ratios) are statistically
proportional to the relative amounts that they spend on research (for small amounts).6
Because research spending must be subtracted from pre-tax earnings, a company’s value
as a continuing source of revenue passes through a maximum as research spending increases.
This determines an optimal spending level which can be calculated by simply maximizing a
quadratic equation (Figure 1). Once the optimum has been reached, further increases in research
spending become counterproductive because they subtract from current production.
iv Chiang Mai J. Sci. 2010; 37(3)

By analogy, there exists an optimum fraction of the national budget for spending on
research (and another fraction for development). For this case, however, there are no quantitative
models, and so the optimum level for the country is not known. This is unfortunate because it
is clear that spending at levels near the optimum is essential for maximizing the total return on
the assets of the country and thereby maintaining its competitive position. Note also that
Figure 1 suggests that, if the country’s output became more specialized, a larger fraction of
the national income could be put into research effectively.

Deciding Research Directions

Decision making about what research to pursue illustrates how research activities are very
different from development activities. For long-term scientific research (defined by its output:
namely, research papers published in reputable archival journals), such decisions should be left
to the practitioners. The wise have known this for a long time. The purpose of good
management is to enable practitioners to be creative and then the management can then bask
in the glory of the results. Results cannot be generated by management and especially not by
the sponsor. Just as the music of an orchestra must come from the instrumentalists, research
results must come from the researchers at the bench.
In the case of development, the management situation is quite different. Now the unknown
moves from the front to the back row. The shape of the activity and its goals are clear enough
that one can attempt applications of various analytic tools. Costs can be estimated. Tasks can
be outlined and their completion times estimated, yielding expense rates. Markets can be studied,
demand estimates based on price, and market shares deduced. Substitution theory can be used
to generate information about expected revenue rates. From these and other factors, one can
postulate a quantitative model of the new business and subject it to various tests. Finally, one
can make a decision, albeit partially subjective, as to whether it is worthwhile to go ahead with
the work.
Trouble arises when these modes of management get interchanged: when excessive
analysis is applied to research or too much intuition is applied to development. The fraction
of “research” that is being done at the discretion of its practitioners is continually decreasing.
The impact of this trend is exacerbated by the fact that much of the development work is not
worth doing. It could not pass the simplest technical or economic screens.
The researcher himself/herself should be the one to decide what research is worth doing
because he/she is better informed than others and is therefore most likely to make the best
choices. And making choices is the essence of research, as stated so well by a great mathematician
in the nineteenth century:
Invention consists of avoiding the constructing of useless combinations and in constructing the useful
combinations which are in the infinite minority. To invent is to discern, to choose.
Jules-Henri Poincar

Consistent with this quotation, research management consists largely of making selections.
Good management selects good people, good technology, and better ambience, etc. Some
people in management positions express the opinion that their function is to “make decisions”.
That is, they see themselves as judges rather than selectors. However, I have the opinion that
these people prove to be ineffective managers.

Research Effectiveness
Let us start at the top of an organisation. The call to direct a research organisation is most
properly a call to service the needs of other people (mostly researchers). As a matter of fact,
a leader of a research group should be someone who can get a better than average performance
from an average group of people. Remember that any large group of people contains mostly
average people, although it may have been screened so that all of its members meet some
Chiang Mai J. Sci. 2010; 37(3) v

minimum skill level. Then imagine what an Edison, a Lawrence Bragg or a Robert R. Wilson
can do with such a group.
Although no one knows what makes individual researchers effective, and it is well known
that their effectiveness varies widely, the effectiveness of a researcher population follows the
well known Pareto distribution (named after the economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto).
The mathematician Alfred James Lotka showed this many years ago for the written outputs
of chemists and physicists 7, as have others for other disciplines.8 The outcome of their study
shows that, if one author has published only a few papers while another has published many
papers in a given time, then you can be sure that the more prolific author is more inclined to
remain prolific. In other words, these studies showed that authorship begets authorship, just as
cities beget larger cities, and income begets more income, and so on.

Conditions for Conducting Successful Research

Researchers who have worked in more than one organisation can often give anecdotal
evidence (or opinions) concerning the effects of good, and less good, management. Excellent
management is usually discounted as an explanation for productive research in favour, of
course, of the talent of the individual researcher. Objective evidence that management has
some effect is provided by the patent literature.9
Studies have shown that a productive research group must possess the following basic
elements:
1. Leading inventors
2. Supporting experts
3. Organisation
4. Coordination
5. Apparatus
6. Laboratory

All of these must be first-rate, not just some of them, if better-than-mediocre results are
to be achieved.
The most important element in this list is the leading inventors. If the leading inventors are
not exceptionally talented, no good production of consequence will be created regardless of
the quality of the other elements in the list. Creative leaders are characterized by intense
motivation. This has usually been awakened in them during an apprenticeship under a past
leader in their particular field. They create new technical ideas and then combine them in new
ways.
Inventors of technology must also have a high tolerance of risk and must be able to
accept imperfections. Thus, a creative inventor pushes his work beyond the “state-of-the-art”.
This sometimes results in wrong output, poor results or other failures. Thus, inventors or
whoever manages them must expect many failures to precede most successes. If the failures
do not occur, the organisation is not pushing the state-of-the-art hard enough.
But leading performers alone are not enough. Their efforts can be greatly strengthened
by supporting performers. First-rate technical, analytical, library and shop services can mean
the difference between a good and an excellent research organisation. A creative group of
researchers also needs the guidance from an organisational structure that has a beginning,
middle and a purposeful overall direction.
Many pressures act on and within any organisation. These will tend to randomise its
efforts if they are not counteracted in some way. This is the job of the group leader (Director).
If the organisation functioned ideally, a Director would not be necessary but, in reality, the
Director must coordinate its various activities and continually restrain wayward trends. Also,
the Director ensures continuity by recruiting new members. Furthermore, the availability of
first-rate apparatus provided to the group also leads to good research.
 vi Chiang Mai J. Sci. 2010; 37(3)

The final essential element in the operation of a creative research group is its facilities, in
other words its housing. This cannot be treated casually because it strongly affects the interactions
between the people in the group and its beneficiaries. In research, communication and attitude
play important roles. These include effects on communication to the group, within the group
and outwards from the group to patrons.
There is a strong tendency to homogenise organisations for administrative convenience.
However, as explained earlier, large, homogeneous laboratories do not essentially invent
efficiently. For any organisation to be successful, special internal structuring is necessary for it
to provide desired results. Lack of nimbleness is a basic problem, so nimble sub-groups are
a solution. In the case of research, small informal groupings can be arranged with productivities
well above that of the parent organisation.

The Financial Paradox

From the viewpoint of accounting, research is analogous to inventory – a cost now, to be
converted into income later. When real interest rates rise, the cost of carrying inventory rises, as
does that of research. Pressure develops to turn over inventory quickly and to cash in on
research quickly.
Secondary effects intensify the situation. Because growing assets is a slower process than
buying them, organisations turn to buying. This increases the demand for money, thereby
pushing up the prices, leading to a shift from the homogeneous organisations with technical
depth to heterogeneous, technically shallow conglomerates. Power moves from technical
managers to financial managers and the focus of management moves from deferred to current
income. Research managers and their superiors change their outlook to concentrate on the
short term, not because this was natural for them but because there was no other realistic
response to the changes in the financial environment. These changes affect industry first, then
government and finally universities.
No number of researchers talking to each other or talking to research managers is going
to undo the existing short-term focus. For such a change to occur, the quantitative parameters
of the financial system must be changed. But, unfortunately, no one has socially acceptable
ideas for accomplishing this.

REFERENCES
[1] Baruch J.J., Science, 1984; 224: 7.
[2] Barzun J., Science: The Glorious Entertainment, Harper and Row, New York, 1964.
[3] Josephson M., Edison, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1959.
[4] Hawkins L.A., Adventure into the Unknown, William Morrow, New York, 1950.
[5] Hounshell D.A. and Smith J.K. Jr., Science and Corporate Strategy, Cambridge, New York,
1988.
[6] Wallin C.C. and Gilman J.J., Res. Management, 1986; 29: 19., also Res. Management, 1978;
21: 34.
[7] Lotka A.J., J. Washington Acad. Sci., 1926; 16: 317.
[8] de Solla Price D.J., Little Science, Big Science and….Beyond, Columbia, New York, 1986.
[9] Gilman J.J. and Siczek A.A., Res. Management, 1985; 28: 29.

OPINION is a forum for the expression of the individual views of the author. Publication here does not imply
that these views are endorsed by the Chiang Mai Journal of Science.

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