About this issue

Again, by coincidence of dates of receipt, review, and revision of manuscripts, we have a convergence of two of the three papers in this issue on a specific subject of high importance to Research, Development, and Engineering (RD&E) management. This is the topic of identifying, selecting, assigning, promoting, and otherwise maintaining and effectively using the professional staff in RD&E. The two sets of authors — Keller/Holland and Munson/Posner — come at the subject from different vantage points. The former approaches it from the viewpoint of selecting people for jobs in the organization and the latter approaches it from the viewpoint of trying to understand the differences (where they exist) between nonmanagement engineers and managers in RD&E. Both studies can provide insight into the abilities, personality traits, values and other attributes which can “cause” or influence one individual or type of individual to be more successful than another in RD&E. The need for the qualification about causation is that many factors contribute to success of individuals in a job and some of them (many of them in the view of some observers) are external to the person and are not subject to his/her control.