Applied Business Research

Abstract

An enterprise, financially oriented or otherwise, needs managers and management scientists. Persons with differing skills, attitudes, and incentive reward systems fulfill these two roles respectively. The manager is identified as a single individual and the management scientist as a team. The ``traditional'' approach of identifying the differences in the two classifications is presented. A method of selecting problems is described that appears to be meaningful to both the manager and management scientists and which serves as a basis for research portfolio selection. The usual scheme for allocating research effort between short- and long-range payoffs is analyzed. This single distribution of effort with little real time contribution and little ``way out work'' creates a negative relationship situation, and generates comparatively low payoffs to the enterprise as well as to the managers and management scientists. A second, bi-modal scheme is outlined involving real time help to operating managers by management scientists, a significant ``way out'' contribution, and an area of cooperative work. This scheme seems to generate a positive atmosphere of mutual respect, interdependence, and cooperative action. This approach takes the same personal and professional differences as the first approach, but uses them to their mutual advantage rather than as points of conflict. An attempt is made to suggest a general hypothesis for cooperative team business research wherein the line manager is a participating member of the research group.