Motives to Publish, to Patent and to Standardize: An Explorative Study Based on Individual Engineers’ Assessments

This paper employs the concept of ‘Gold’ (financial rewards), ‘Ribbon’ (reputational/career rewards) and ‘Puzzle’ (intrinsic satisfaction) to structure engineers’ motivation for pursuing scientific publications, patenting and contributing to standardization. This study is based on the responses to a survey of engineers employed by two German Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) active in the automotive sector. Based on three explorative factor analyses, we identify in the first step factors of motives related to publishing, patenting and standardization. In the second step, we assign these factors to the three categories ‘Gold’, ‘Ribbon’ and ‘Puzzle’. We find that the engineers surveyed assign a lower overall importance to career rewards and reputation and a higher importance to intrinsic satisfaction, while financial rewards are of lower importance, in general, and not at all relevant for contributions to standardization. In comparing these motivations with the drivers for researchers in public research organizations, we identify the role of regulatory framework conditions and intra-organizational structures in particular for researchers' intrinsic motivations. Finally, we derive some implications for companies’, but also public research organizations’ incentives and support schemes focusing on researchers.