U.S. R&D, 1975–1998: A new dataset

Abstract

Research Summary: Here, I document the governing copyright law and process of digitizing print records with specific application to the Jaques Cattell directories of U.S. R&D. This novel dataset covers 2,805 companies with 8,525 facilities, including location, reporting line within the organization, numbers of professional staff and technicians, and R&D fields over the years 1975-1998. The dataset includes a match to the Compustat identifier, gvkey. As an illustration, I use the new dataset to investigate the effect of organization structure on innovation. By contrast with previous research based on smaller samples, I find no significant relation between organization structure and innovation. Managerial Summary: Here, I document the governing copyright law and process of digitizing print records with specific application to the Jaques Cattell directories of U.S. R&D. This novel dataset covers 2,805 companies with 8,525 facilities, including location, reporting line within the organization, numbers of professional staff and technicians, and R&D fields over the years 1975-1998. The dataset is matched to Compustat. It can be used to study novel issues including (a) the effect of complementary manufacturing and marketing assets on how a company exploits its technological capabilities; (b) the relation between the centralization of the R&D organization and productivity of innovation; (c) how clusters influence the location of R&D facilities; and (iv) how state law affects the geography of R&D. K E Y W O R D S dataset, location, organization, personnel, R&D

When stronger patent law reduces patenting: Empirical evidence

“…Here, we studied the effect of the CAFC on the most immediate outcome—patenting. It would be interesting to investigate the effect of the CAFC on R&D, and particularly, the regional distribution of R&D (Png, 2019). It would also be interesting to study the effects of the CAFC on markets for technology (Arora, Fosfuri, & Gambardella, 2001).…”

Dissecting the tension of open science standards implementation in management and organization journals

“…Even though many editors and other members of the management and organization studies community have expressed support for the implementation of the new transparency standards (Ethiraj, Gambardella, and Helfat 2016, 2017, 2019Antonakis 2017;Van Witteloostuijn 2016;Chen 2015), they also highlighted implementation challenges resulting from the wide set of paradigms and methods employed in the management and organization discipline (Beugelsdijk, Van Witteloostuijn, and Meyer 2020;Ethiraj, Gambardella, and Helfat 2017;Pratt, Kaplan, and Whittington 2020). The TOP standards originate from psychology, where most research is based on experimental designs, while the majority of research in management and organization studies is based on observational designs, either quantitative or qualitative.…”

“…However, the costs increase considerably when observational quantitative studies based on author-collected data are considered. The data collection process for such studies can take years and involve cooperation between multiple parties (Png 2019;Beugelsdijk, Van Witteloostuijn, and Meyer 2020). When the ready dataset is posted online (as required by levels 2 and 3), the marginal benefit from the investment in data collection is reduced by the risk of other authors capitalizing on the shared data in their publications (Ethiraj, Gambardella, and Helfat 2017;Resnik 2006;Hagstrom 1974), particularly when a given field of research is highly competitive (Haeussler et al 2014).…”

Combining Multiple Organizational-level Databases: An Empirical Evaluation of Different Matching Methods

“…The check of the studies in the SMJ confirms that also in 2019, multiple secondary databases are frequently combined and that the vast majority of the studies do not report in detail on the method(s) utilized to combine the data (e.g., Aggarwal 2020; Arikan, Arikan, and Shenkar 2020; Graffin et al 2020). The studies that do describe the MM show that name MMs are utilized (e.g., Cao, Gustafson, and Velthuis 2019; Hendricks, Howell, and Bingham 2019) as well as common identifiers methods (e.g., Kang and Kim 2020; Meyer-Doyle, Lee, and Helfat 2019), and fuzzy name/key word methods (e.g., Png 2019; Ridge et al 2019). The work by Png (2019) describes the development of a new data set and could be considered as a good example of describing the MM.…”

“…The studies that do describe the MM show that name MMs are utilized (e.g., Cao, Gustafson, and Velthuis 2019; Hendricks, Howell, and Bingham 2019) as well as common identifiers methods (e.g., Kang and Kim 2020; Meyer-Doyle, Lee, and Helfat 2019), and fuzzy name/key word methods (e.g., Png 2019; Ridge et al 2019). The work by Png (2019) describes the development of a new data set and could be considered as a good example of describing the MM.…”