Too big to innovate? Exploring organizational size and innovation processes in scientific research

We explore the impact of organizational size in six federally funded research organizations on a range of organizational processes related to the pursuit of innovation. The data utilized consisted of 266 scientists drawn from 64 research projects across five programmatic research areas: alternative energies, biology, chemistry, geophysical sciences, and material sciences. A sixth project category was added to accommodate the highly interdisciplinary character of a handful of projects. Although the data had some limitations, it was found that organizational size had a negative impact on three categories of innovation processes: the amount of time spent in research and professional activities, how research time is spent, and exchanges of technical knowledge. In addition, some potential advantages of larger size, such as: greater research resources, better perceived managerial quality or a visionary strategy, were not found to be significant.