A multinational study of work climate, job satisfaction, and the productivity of R&D teams

A study was conducted covering 658 industrial and 1033 academic R&D teams in 11 countries, not including the United States. The climate variable of work importance explained unique variance in publication of original articles as well as external ratings of technical quality for both samples. The climate variable of participation/cooperation accounted for unique variance in articles published in both samples, and in technical quality ratings for the industrial sample. Satisfaction with pay/advancement explained unique variance in patents for the industrial sample and in articles for the academic sample. Satisfaction with supervision accounted for unique variance in patents and technical quality ratings for the academic sample. The inclusion of country as a control variable had some effects on the results, but still left work climate and job satisfaction as relatively robust predictors of R&D team productivity. Implications for R&D managers are discussed in the paper.