Motivation and Organisation of Decentralised R&D

It is a familiar argument that the emergence of global strategies in leading enterprises has involved the balancing of factors encouraging an increased emphasis on the distinctive needs of overseas markets with the more traditional factors believed to favour a continued concentration on the centralisation of key functions. Thus the need to maximise global competitiveness is seen as requiring a full response to the characteristic needs of each major market and also the need to optimise the use of each country’s productive potential, either to supply its local market in the most competitive way or to incorporate efficient capacity in a wider strategy (i.e. as export-platform facilities). Operating against the moves towards the decentralisation of activity provoked by these perspectives may be such familiar centralising influences as the need to fully recognise economies of scale (in production, R&D, management, etc.) and the importance of sustained close communications between the key decision makers from various functional areas (e.g. marketing, R&D, engineering, planning).