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Factors affecting the management of interdisciplinary research in the pharmaceutical industry
Author(s) -
Loveday D. E. E.
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
randd management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.253
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1467-9310
pISSN - 0033-6807
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9310.1984.tb01148.x
Subject(s) - discipline , flexibility (engineering) , maturity (psychological) , management styles , pharmaceutical industry , task (project management) , knowledge management , process management , psychology , business , management , computer science , sociology , medicine , pharmacology , social science , developmental psychology , economics
The author uses the results of recent published behavioural research on team effectiveness as a framework to analyse the problems of managing R&D in pharmaceutical development. The research points to a large number of factors as having a potential impact on managing such R&D which is inescapably multi‐ or inter‐disciplinary in nature. Some such factors may originate outside the team, some within. External factors include organizational climate, R&D decision‐making environment, system maturity and organizational form (type of matrix); internal factors include span of responsibility of team members, disciplinary differentiation, task uncertainty, extent of fulfilment of Belbin roles and a significant requirement for flexibility of style on the part of the manager. The author's conclusion is that achieving effective management of R&D teams in the pharmaceutical R&D environment requires attention to all these factors. The extent to which integration of different disciplines is achieved is symptomatic of the degree to which these factors are understood and attended to.