Looking to the future

Abstract

We can see the desirability of an organisational research field and focus developing in relation to physical sciences research. The uniqueness of the organisation required for basic scientific research needs to be recognised. Scientific research of a creative kind, is unlikely to be organised and managed effectively, in ways appropriate to more routine work. Much organisational research has been based in the production orientated and bureaucratic setting, whose systems are appropriate to the production of standard products. These systems include for example, formal hierarchies, and strict quality control. The application to science research teams and laboratories, of systems based on this type of organisational setting, could only be harmful to creative science which aims to produce not a standard product, but something entirely new.