Subculture by autonomy and group cohesion and its effect on job satisfaction of R&D professionals in an R&D organization

Professional research and development (R&D) organizations typically employ highly educated professionals to work on a range of creative, intellectual projects in their chosen fields. In these organizations, organizational culture and subculture are critical factors connected with project success. This paper explores the existence of subcultures and the factors that contribute to subcultures within a professional R&D organization, and examines subcultural effects on the job satisfaction of R&D professionals to suggest a suitable cultural type for professional R&D organizations. Autonomy and group cohesion are considered, so grid–group theory is applied to measure R&D culture. The subjects were 285 full-time researchers who had worked at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, an international IT institution, for over 5 years. Differences were found in organizational culture according to the research fields and types (applied and developmental research). The egalitarian culture type (low grid, high group) is found to be suitable for improving job satisfaction in R&D organizations.