R&D Workers’ Professional Identity and Job Satisfaction: The Moderating Role of Task Specialization and Met-Expectation

In current business environment characterized by rapid change and innovation. the need to maximize R&D performance and efficiency is paramount. In particular, science and engineering is one of the key areas that drive the development of current Korean economy. However, the quality of science and engineering outputs of Korea indicated by science citation indices is much less than that of more developed countries, despite recent large investment in R&D activities. This suggests that there may be another important success factors in R&D productivity in addition to the R&D investment, and it is critical to discover the factors. This study aims at exploring the factors that can improve R&D performance and effective ways to manage R&D professionals. One of the key social factors is known to enhance R&D performance is R&D workers’ professional identity. Despite enduring interest in the relationship between R&D workers’ professional identity and job satisfaction, little has been discovered in terms of under what conditions this relationship is strengthened or weakened, This study suggests R&D workers’ task design as a key boundary condition, and analyzes the dynamics between task specialization and professional identity, and their combined effects on job satisfaction in the context of R&D professionals in public research organizations in Korea. For empirical test, data was collected from 695 Korean R&D professionals in 26 public research organizations in Korea. First, this study examined the impact of Korean R&D workers’ professional identity on the level of job satisfaction. Professional identity is defined as the extent to which a worker perceives his or her work as a professional one, and the value the worker attaches to the work. Past research shows that knowledge workers exhibit higher performance when they possess professional identity or professionalism. Strong professional identity enhances job satisfaction which leads to higher performance. This research revealed that R&D professional’s strong identity increased job satisfaction. Second, this study explored the effect of task specialization as a structural variable that can enhance R&D professionals’ job satisfaction. Knowledge workers such as R&D professionals tend to be career- oriented, rather than organization-oriented, so task specialization can be an important motivator for them. However, Korean R&D professionals tend to invest majority of their time on the activities other than research-oriented activities including research project development, market research, and administrative work. This study showed that R&D workers’ professional identity increased their job satisfaction, and that this relationship was stronger for those who invested most of his or time in research-oriented activities. Finally, this study found the influence of met-expectation (i.e., to the extent that the R&D professionals’ expectations on task specialization has been met) on the R&D professionals’ degree of job satisfaction and the strength of professional identity. More specifically, the R&D professionals whose initial expectation on task specialization was met experienced stronger professional identity and a higher level of job satisfaction. This study sheds light on the importance of task specialization for R&D professionals. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed as well.