ABSTRACT
What do engineers and scientists working in industrial R&D want from their work? What do they find in it? Is there any mismatch between aspirations and achievements? Are there invariant universals in the hopes and joys of R&D workers or are there important national variations? Equally, is there manifold variety in the organisational arrangements regulating R&D work or do the demands of effective and efficient performance set severe constraints? The reference to ‘contents’ in this chapter heading is deliberately ambiguous and intended to herald our attention to both the ‘constituent parts that make up the detail of R&D work’ and to the ‘satisfactions’ (and dissatisfactions) which can be found in such work.
