Categories
Culture, Society & Family Learning & Education Researcher news SMU In The News

Science Magazine: Research identifies keys to managing scientists, engineers

Leaders who understand how to manage their employees’ commitment to both their organizations and professions may be the most successful at motivating and retaining innovators

Science Magazine covered the research of SMU Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Steven Currall, also professor of management and organization at SMU’s Cox School of Business. Currall is co-author on research about how leaders can manage innovators to motivate and retain them in their organization.

Study co-authors include Sara Perry, assistant professor of management in Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business, and Emily Hunter, associate professor of management at Hankamer.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

Science Magazine
A new study from Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business helps leaders better understand how to manage innovators, specifically scientists and engineers.

“Our study suggests that leaders who understand how to manage their employees’ commitment to both their organizations and professions may be the most successful at motivating and retaining innovators,” said the study’s lead author, Sara Perry, Ph.D., assistant professor of management in Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business. “Innovators represent a highly valued workforce.”

The study, Managing the Innovators: Organizational and Professional Commitment Among Scientists and Engineers, which is published in the journal Research Policy, identifies highly innovative individuals as “typically higher performers (who) are rated as more creative and proactive by their supervisors than their less-innovatively oriented peers.”

For this project, researchers surveyed 255 academic science and engineering professionals working in 22 National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Engineering Research Centers. The study centered on “dual allegiance” among these innovators – their loyalties to their professions versus their commitment to their organizations.

A general assumption, Perry said, is that these are always in conflict, but research shows that is not necessarily the case.

Read the full story.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information, www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.