182 



National Resources Planning Board 



Not shown on the figure are an additional eight com- 

 panies below $2,000. Above $25,000,000 the number 

 or organizations engaged in research drops sharply, 

 probably reflecting the general decrease in the number 

 of larger corporations in existence. 



Distribution of Research Personnel 

 by Corporate Size 



Although the extent of research as measured by the 

 number of managements engaged in it is a significant 

 aspect of the size distribution, even more important is 

 the total number of research personnel employed. The 

 latter is not only indicative of the distribution of em- 

 plo5Tnent and employment opportunities; it is an index 

 to both the expenditures for, and the achievements to 

 be expected from industrial research. The distribution 



by size of industry is shown " in figure 52 which differs 

 from figure 51 in that the bars represent research 

 employment reported in 1940 instead of the number of 

 corporate units. 



The small contribution to total research employment 

 made by the small and middle-sized corporate units is 

 immediately apparent. Very evidently the bulk of 

 industrial research contributions are being supported 

 by a rather limited number of large corporations. The 

 actual research acliievements as well as the latent 

 possibilities of the large number of smaller corporations 

 should by no means be ignored, but the total bulk of 

 their research effort is, at present, rather small. 



Figures 51 and 52 suggest a comparison of the average" 

 number of research workers employed by corporate 



» See footnotes 18, 19, and 20. 



INDEPENDENT MANAGEMENTS UTILIZING RESEARCH, 

 DISTRIBUTED ACCORDING TO CORPORATE SIZE 



1,000 (2P00) 



10.000 



100,000 



10,000,000 



100,000,000 



1,000,000 



DOLLARS 

 TflNGIBLE NET WORTH OF INDIVIDUAL CORPORATE UNITS 

 Figure 51. — Independent Managements Utilizing Research, Distributed According to Corporate Size: 1940 



1,000,000,000 



