The Importance of Research and Development Within an Organization and How they Correlate (Essay Sample)

Research and Development (R&D)
Name:
Institution:
Introduction
In a competitive environment, firms are forced to adopt business strategies in order to confront competition, increase profitability and market share. Research and Development can be defined as important key activities that a business choose to conduct with the ultimate intention of coming up with a new idea or a discovery that can positively lead to the development of new products, procedures or even Improve the old existing product. The main purpose of this essay is to discuss the importance of linking up Research and development (R&D) together with business and the business strategies.
There is a greater need in the business world today to increase and strengthen the impact of research and development (R&D) simply by linking it with business activities and its business strategies. This is basically because many businesses operate in a highly volatile business environment that is characterized by high and intense competition, radical changes in the economies and many political challenges. It is believed that Research and Development is one of the greatest ways that a business can expand by experiencing future growth through the development of new products or procedures and steps to improve and widen their business operations (Contractor, 2011).
Business Strategy
Business strategy is a way of achieving a desired goal through implementing and evaluating various decisions that will help an organization to achieve and acquire its long-term objectives. It is the process of coming up with the organization mission, vision and objectives. Business strategy also helps in formulating plans and allocating of resources to implement the policies desired. From the definitions above there should be a link between Research and Development (R&D) and business strategy for global organizations. In current world Research and Development (R&D) is considered as a core part of all the key business activities. Before concluding on the major decisions of the firm Research and Development (R&D) should always be the key factor of consideration (Spender, 2014).
Linking R&D with Business Strategy
Research and Development (R&D) should also be linked up with business strategies because the level of competition, methods and business processes are vigorously increasing hence it is of importance in the marketing field of the organization where they are able to keep an eye of the competitors key activities and also customers so that they can keep pace of the global trends. This will closely help them analyses the needs of their customers and what areas to improve upon in order to beat their customers (Contractor, 2011). On the other hand combining both Research and Development (R&D) and the business strategies can be quite challenging because it is difficult to manage Research and Development simply because the researchers may not a clue on hoe to specifically to achieve the most desired objectives and also it requires a lot of funds.
The other importance of actually strengthening the link between (R&D) and business strategies for global organizations is because the continuous substitution of knowledge (intangible capital) for physical (tangible capital) the last decades, has shown the important role of R&D on the performance of the firms (Lev, 2009). R&D investment has been studied from several different perspectives based on businesses.
Integration of R&D and business strategy in the workplace.
To achieve integration of Research and Development business strategy in the workplace managers have to be very keen and they should consider some of the following activities.
The enhancements of new products will simply make the organization to conduct some research and development in order to come up with the best products and services. This can be achieved through improving of existing products and the services that are available in the work place.
Managers can also develop new business opportunities. Developing of new business activities will definitely need Research and Development. Before developing a new business the managers must come up with strategies that will make the development of the product successful. This will lead to the integration to the new invention of Research and Development (R&D). The new business will also make the workers to reason with the evolving and new technological changes (Lei & Slocum, 2013).
For an integration to be successful; in the workplace the managers have to reduce all the extra costs that may be incurred when coming up with the new business ideas. This will help the organization to have confidence in integrating, because they will believe that the new methods are not intended to deploy more money and resources from the organization rather than bringing more radical changes.
Increasing productivity and effectiveness in the use of all resources is another way that a manager can encourage the integration of Research Development in business strategies in the work place. When productivity and effectives are increased in the current projects of the organization then new ideas will be fully accepted and worked upon in the working place because the organization will have the confidence to integrate to new ideas
(Zhang, & Pearce, 2012).
Improving responsiveness and cycle time performance is also a great way of improving and encouraging an organization towards integrating to Research and development. Through improve in responsiveness and cycle time performance in various fields of the company the manager will have a greater chance to convince the work place to adopt Research and development in the business strategies of the organization. The cycle time will also help in meeting the demands rapidly changing in the global markets, which enables the organization to carry out an integration step by step (Spender, 2014).
Different approaches to R&D
There are different approaches to Research and Development just depending on their workplace contexts. The approaches include the following:
Work Conference.
A work conference is mainly an organized democratic discussion forum, which involves representatives of all stakeholder groups and hierarchical levels of an organization to evaluate the past together with the Present and to make effective plans for the future. The features of the method is that the criteria of democratic dialogue are followed at the conferences. It has 13 criteria contain, among others, that it must be genuinely possible for all Concerned to participate, that all participants are equal, that work experience is the basis for participation, that each participant must accept that other participants can have better arguments, and that the dialogue must continuously produce agreements which can provide platforms for practical action (Gustavse, 2012).
Many of the criteria, if followed in a systematic manner, may signify a clear break with traditional practices prevailing at workplaces. For example, in the case of the Day Care Services of the City of Tampere that was used as an example of the Work Conference method in practice, the personnel felt that "for the first time the upper management was listening to us”. The Work Conference method was originally developed in the 1980s and it was made well-known by the Swedish LOM Programme (2007).
Kalliolla & Penson (2015) believed that it was imported to the circle of Finnish action researchers quickly through different channels (e.g. Work Research Centre of the University of Tampere, Research Unit of the Ministry of Labor, Finnish Employers’ Management Development Institute, and Educational Centre of the Finnish Metalworkers’ Union) almost at the same time. The method has been so far most widely used in the Finnish municipal sector where the first projects were carried out between 1991 and 1993 as part of a
Municipal Quality Project that was funded by the Finnish Work Environment Fund
(Kalliolla & Penson 2005).
Search Conference
According to Morley, D. & Trist, E. (2011) A search conference is a method which has been found to create conditions under which the multiple dimensions of complex issues can be cooperatively explored to a far higher degree than usually, by members of the many and often divergent groups concerned. The aim is to obtain new perspectives on a problem in such a way that it helps generate new options and create new possibilities for a more cohesive relationship between many who have not been able to do that previously for different reasons. The method was originally developed by Fred and Evelyn Emery in the 1970s and it has been widely used in Australia, Canada and Norway.
Telljohann (2006) states that a search conference focuses on the future, even up to 10-15 years ahead, with the basic assumption that there are many possible futures and the future can, to a considerable extent, e influenced by human intervention. The long time horizon is used with a view to unlocking people from their immediate short-term preoccupations. In the end, however, the discussion must return closer to the present and to the focal problem in order to permit agreeing on concrete action steps that should be taken.
The membership of a search conference is usually a mix of people from different categories and organizational levels, but one of the basic rules is that they should be considered equal to each other. They are the ‘owners’ of what is being produced, and the researchers/consultants should play a purely facilitative role to help to manage the learning process and not to interfere in the content of the discussions (Lei & Slocum, 2013). A search conference is a ‘heavy-weight’ method in terms of its scale and scope, i.e. the participants should be involved in the confer...