Director field, worked example

A good example of available but unpublished data in the industrial field is the results of the American Petroleum Institute Fundamental Research projects. Although eventually published, use can be made of the data prior to publication so long as the one using them does not in turn publish them. Results are circulated to many petroleum companies which sponsor the research projects. A person working in another field such as pharmaceuticals or food, however, may be saved a great deal of time by knowledge of the properties of a new compound which has been prepared by one of the projects. He can obtain them on request from the American Petroleum Institute or the director of the project. 

More problems arise from the position of the persoimel function. There is, inevitably, a tension between the Operahons Director s desire to maximize staff udhzation and revenue, on the one hand, and the individual employee s career aspirahons on the other. A specialist in IBM mainframe software may feel, for example, that career opportunities in that field are limited and wish to gain experience of other types of hardware however, so long as the comparer has projects which involve IBM mainframes, such a speciahst can command a higher charging rate when used on such woik and it wiU therefore be in the interests of the Operations Director not to provide the opportunity to move to other work. Similar problems arise when the Operations Director wants an individual to woik abroad but the individual s personal circumstances make this inconvenient or undesirable. The persoimel function should be able to act as an intermediary in these circumstances but it is difficult for it to do so while it reports directly to the Operations Director. 

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