How effective are professional development activities for R&D engineers
- ISSN: 10478310
- DOI: 10.1016/j.hitech.2005.06.002
Abstract
Despite the many claims by scholars and managers regarding the importance of professional development activities to organizations, few studies have examined the effectiveness of such activities. Using data from 498 engineers of an R&D organization of a large information technology company, we explore the effect of six professional development activities (attending conferences, reading trade publications, conducting stretch assign- ments, making customer contacts, taking short courses, and taking university courses) on the assessment of the employees relative contribution to the organizations success. Results reveal that only making customer contacts and attending conferences are positively related to the engineers relative contributions to the organizations success, while the other activities are not related. Implications of these surprising results are discussed for both academics and practitioners.
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