Research & Development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Research & Development - Essay Example To cope with the changing situations, the essence of research and development is increasingly felt. Constant research and development in almost every aspect of life is being continuously conducted to generate better value to its related factors. Like other sectors of industry (e.g. technology, communication, marketing and finance, etc), labor sector is also under the constant purview of research and development. The most important feature which makes labor industry significantly different from that of other functions is the psychological touch involved in it along with the technical expertise. The laborers of any industry are human beings in first place and so they have aspirations, goals, objectives and needs. Again these psychological factors differ from laborers to laborers depending upon their culture, backgrounds, perceptions and prejudices and other factors. In order to make the labor industry efficient in its functions and performance all the above factors are to be considered and continuous research and development should be initiated. So, it can be conferred that the research and development in the labor industry is critical and important, sometimes even more than other organizational functions. Research and development is initiated generally to upgrade any working system from its present condition or performance. Popularly known as R & D, research and development can be defined as, "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications" (OECD. 2008). Research and development generally can be subdivided into three sub parts namely basic research, applied research and experimental research. Basic research is a type of research activity where investigational and theoretical initiatives are undertaken basically to acquire knowledge base of the underlying facts and figures. This type of research activity is done generally as part of academic interests as there are not much application or usage of the results of basic research. Applied research is built upon the basic research and is also done to acquire new knowledge domains but with more specified and certain objectives. It deals with the core of the subject. In comparison to the first two types of research, the third component i.e. the experimental research deals with more application. It develops the research output from the basic as well as applied research and is concerned with development of new products or installation of new processes. It also deals with improvement of devices already installed or produced. Traditionally, labor has been classified as a person who sold his physical strength in order to earn his livelihood. The payment that he received for such a sale was known as 'wage'. So the laborers are also known as wage earner. But today the term labor has a more broad perspective. In the present world, laborers are generally classified under three broad heads i.e. the skilled labor, the semi skilled labor and the unskilled labor. It can be well presumed that the skilled laborers are those who have certain technical knowledge about the task they perform and so generally receives the highest pay among the three classes. Semi-skilled