Business focus for R&D funding

The growth in funding for science and technology should be closely tied to research that establishes the best opportunities for its commercialisation, according to a leading business academic.

Addressing the Irish Academy of Management annual conference in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) yesterday, Prof John Murray of the university's business school, said there should be a link between scientific research and the global business environment.

He argued that the growth in funding for scientific and technological innovation should be tied to related research into the business settings in which it could be commercialised to generate employment and wealth.

Prof Murray, the conference's plenary speaker, called for management research into this State's position in the global economy to be put on the national agenda.

"Deeper engagement between scholars, managers and policymakers is vital to ensure that policy and business strategy is well founded and that success and failure are seen as a source of learning, rather than causes for denial or myth making," he said.

By the time the conference ends today, speakers will have presented 250 papers covering a range of topics in the management area.

The winning paper, CEO Pay: Another Folly?, was presented by Prof Gerard F Farias, of Fairleigh Dickinson University in the US. Prof Farias argued that, in aligning chief executives' pay only with maximising shareholder wealth, organisations run the risk of distancing their manager from employees, a key constituency in building a company's competitive advantage.

He pointed out that evidence from the media suggested the basic theory of linking executive pay to shareholder wealth was, in any case, diluted.

"Often, certain payments that are ostensibly contingent on performance are paid anyway," he said.

Prof Farias added that the standards set on performance-linked payments in executive salaries were often too low and, therefore, easily achievable.

Mr Denis Harrington of Waterford Institute of Technology, and two British colleagues, Mr Thomas Lawton and Mr Tazeeb Rajwani, of Imperial College London, argued that national airlines would soon be a thing of the past in Europe.

"It is likely that pan-EU rather than individual country ownership and will become the norm," the three academics said.