پوزیشن ها و پاداش ها: تخصیص منابع در یک شرکت کارآفرینی مبتنی بر علم

We study the link between resource allocation and employee publication in the open science in a quantitative case study of one science-based, entrepreneurial firm. We bridge the literature on incentives with that on authority structures to argue that a positive relationship between rewards and productivity will be strongest for individuals in positions of scientific leadership within the firm. In a novel dataset, we find that prolific publishers receive greater year-end bonuses and are allocated additional direct reports, but this relationship only holds for individuals in scientific leadership roles. These results contribute to our understanding of resource allocation processes and reward structures in science-based firms.

The role of incentive structures in promoting knowledge creation and other forms of entrepreneurial activity within science-based firms has received considerable attention in the literature. To date, scholars have examined hiring policies in science-based firms (Stern, 2004) and the proclivities of university-trained scientists to work in private firms (e.g., Roach and Sauermann, 2010, Lacetera and Zirulia, 2012 and Sauermann and Stephan, 2013). For a limited set of pharmaceutical firms, Henderson and Cockburn (1994) have linked pro-publication policies to innovative productivity. In a quantitative case study, Bhaskarabhatia and Hegde (2012) examine the effect of IBM's decision to adopt a pro-patent incentive regime. Despite the deepening of our understanding of the link between human resource practices, publishing, and patenting, scholars have devoted much less attention to the inventive context within firms, including the potential interrelationships among a range of factors such as resource allocation practices, corporate culture, incentive plans, and the distinct positions and roles that knowledge workers hold within organizations ( Murray, 2004 is a notable exception). This dearth stems not from a lack of interest (for example, see Audretsch et al., 2007 and Grimaldi et al., 2011), but in the obstacles associated with collecting data on the activities of scientists and the management systems in place in R&D organizations within for-profit firms. In this paper, we provide quantitative evidence of the link between publication and rewards in a large—but still entrepreneurial—firm, which we label “BTCO” to preserve anonymity. We argue that the reward structure for these activities may not be uniform across BTCO's knowledge workers. Specifically, although it is not a written policy, we hypothesize that the organization's incentive system will be targeted to most generously reward knowledge-generating activities for those individuals in more senior, scientific leadership roles in the company. To examine these issues, we investigate a longitudinal dataset that span the years 2001–2008. As we follow individual scientists over time, we can study the effects of year-to-year variation in each individual's publication success. We link this measure of knowledge production to two outcomes within the organization: the amount of discretionary compensation earned, and changes in the individual's span of control (i.e., number of direct reports allocated to them). Consistent with Henderson and Cockburn (1994), we equate the allocation of rewards as a tangible indicator of senior management's priorities (e.g., the incentive structure) within this entrepreneurial firm. Moreover, we measure the allocation of rewards, rather than the promise of rewards because this is a more easily observable outcome within the organization. Surprisingly, we find that this organization, which espouses organization-wide support for publication activities, does not reward the median, publishing individual. However, when we condition our regressions on specific organizational roles, we then find that those employees who are in positions of authority within the organization are rewarded for publishing, but not the technicians who populate these leaders’ laboratories. Specifically, laboratory heads that publish receive greater monetary compensation, as evidenced by the size of their year-end bonuses, and a greater share of organizational resources, as proxied by an individual's number of direct reports. The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 reviews the literature on scientific production within for-profit firms, and the motivations underpinning these activities. In Section 3, we develop two interrelated hypotheses with regards to the contingent incentive structure underlying scientific activities. Section 4 describes our setting, data collection, and measures, and Section 5 presents our findings. A final section concludes and discusses some implications for future research.

This paper has examined the relationship between the allocation of resources and publication success within a science-based firm. We utilize a rich dataset, bringing together a range of resources from compensation to the formal organization of human capital resources, to provide evidence that an employee's publication success is positively linked to the allocation of the organization's rewards. Moreover, we theorize and provide evidence that this correlation exists only for a limited set of positions within the organization. Employees who hold scientific leadership roles within the organization are rewarded for publication success, but rank-and-file members are not. These results extend the body of empirical evidence on the link between intra-organizational contexts and entrepreneurial activities within established, science-based firms. However, this study is not without limitations. One concern is causality. It is possible that publication success itself may be a consequence of the allocation of rewards, rather than the reverse. For example, individuals who receive a payout in the form of discretionary bonus may increase their (future) motivation and effort to publish. Likewise, individuals who receive a greater number of human capital resources will have the ability to simultaneously handle more projects, resulting in an increased likelihood of publication success. And, it is possible that an omitted variable drives the findings. We have attempted to address these issues in a variety ways, but none are fully satisfying. First, we have included person fixed effects to purge the estimates of unobserved, time-stationary attributes. Second, we provide support for the allocation of rewards to successful publishers across two very different types of organizational resources: short-run monetary compensation as well as less-reversible human capital resources. Third, our key explanatory variable, one or more accepted publications within a given year, is somewhat idiosyncratic. Due to the nature of the editorial and review process, it is difficult for authors to control the timing of their output (i.e., accelerating or retarding the publication process). We doubt that many individuals would risk a significant delay in publication that is not required for intellectual property reasons, as this action might jeopardize the establishment of priority that is of central importance within the scientific community. A second concern is the generalizability of our results. As noted in Cockburn and Henderson (1998), there is variability in the extent to which pro-pub strategies permeate the biopharmaceutical industry: some firms readily disseminate their scientific findings, while others hold their discoveries close to their chests. By definition, firms that choose not to adopt a pro-pub strategy will not benchmark their allocation of internal resources to publication success. Nonetheless, for these firms, we suspect that the internal incentive structure will be conditioned upon an individual's position within the organization. Using whatever metric of productivity this firm might value (e.g., patenting), our findings would suggest a tighter link between innovative output and rewards for individuals in positions of authority. Likewise, what about science-based entrepreneurial firms that are “dictatorial” (e.g., Henderson and Cockburn, 1994) where authority is held by a small minority of individuals, rather than the distributed, university-like structure of BTCO research? For organizations that adopt a much more vertical structure, we would expect that incentive structures would be much less high-powered. Specifically, there will be fewer benefits to benchmarking internal rewards and resources to an external evaluation system. As a consequence, we would expect the magnitudes of our effects to decrease. Nonetheless, we predict that as we descend the “pyramid” structure of the organizational hierarchy for these organizations, the effect of productivity on rewards will decrease for these lower positions. The findings in this study speak, most clearly, to the literature on incentive structures in entrepreneurial industries. Recently, a burgeoning set of literature has examined the labor market for scientific talent, with an emphasis on compensating differentials (Stern, 2004). As a complement to this body of work, we extend the examination of individuals who readily traverse the public/private boundary (e.g., Stuart and Ding, 2006 and Azoulay. et al., 2007) into the organization itself. Our findings have implications not only for academic research, but also for managers of science-based firms. In this paper, we have provided an illustration of one large, yet entrepreneurial science-based firm and the internal policies and context that promote entrepreneurial activities. In doing so, a number of potential lessons for managers arise. First, entrepreneurial contexts do not need to be uniform across all members of the organization. To the extent that individuals occupy different roles and functions within the organization, the incentives and rewards for entrepreneurship may be lower- or higher-powered. Second, we illustrate that multiple types of rewards (e.g., monetary, human capital) can be allocated to productive individuals. One particularly intriguing notion, which we are not able to untangle in this paper, is to consider the interplay between award type, an individual's role, and the type of entrepreneurial activity. For example, one might imagine a division of research staff into two types: those that attend to the direct needs of the organization, and a second type which act as liasons (i.e., boundary-spanners) to the external ecosystem within which the organization is embedded. Both individuals might be monetarily rewarded for entrepreneurial activities but, with regards to human capital resources, only the first group may be rewarded to induce boundary spanners to engage more broadly throughout the internal organization. Although speculative, this notion of differential links between rewards and roles emphasizes the intimate relationship between incentive structures and the design of the organization itself. For entrepreneurial firms, choosing an intra-organizational context that encompasses formal structure and chains of command, geographic locations, as well as the short- and long-term allocation of organizational resources are critical factors that shape the firm's innovative trajectory. Although the focus of this paper has been on intra-organizational positions and the contingent effect these positions have on the allocation of organizational resources, the role of tenure within the firm is worth commenting upon. As individuals spend more time in the organization, the organization learns more about each individual's ability and fit, and resources accrue accordingly. It is intriguing, then, to imagine the extra-organizational publication process as a complementary system to the intra-organizational one; and both systems are used by the organization to learn about an individual's talents and abilities. From the organization's perspective, allowing their research employees to engage in the broader scientific community allows the organization to better sort employee quality. As a consequence, this external engagement has long-run implications for the management of the organization, including possibly permeating strategic decision ranging from the allocation of “sticky” internal resources, to structuring of lines of authority within the formal organization, and to patterning of the informal status hierarchy. Ultimately, the contribution of this paper is to illustrate the central importance of organizational positions on shaping the incentive structures within the organization. This paper reaffirms the need to consider the context within which entrepreneurial activities are promoted and, at a minimum, our hope is that this paper serves as an impetus to future theoretical and empirical work on context within science-based entrepreneurial firms.