The determinants of internal reputation: A study of Bahrain research scientists.

This study analyses the factors which determine the reputation of governmental research departments and/or organisations in Bahrain. Reputation in this context refers to the extent to which research scientists regard the department in which they work as a good place or bad place to practise science. Thus it is internal rather than external reputation which is in question. Research scientists in departments within sixteen ministries and organisations were included in the study. The sample of 163 respondents was representative in terms of age, sex, qualifications and experience of the research scientists in the organisations covered. All the research scientists were educated to at least the level of Bachelor of Science (BSc) and in some cases had obtained a higher degree, Master of Science or Doctor of Philosophy. The views of the research scientists were collected by means of a questionnaire which contained 98 Likert-type questions. The relationships between the independent variables and the dependent variable, reputation, were examined using correlation and multi-variate analysis. The factors which contributed most to the perception of reputation were identified. Innovatory climate (INNO) emerged as the main determinant of internal reputation, job satisfaction (JSAT) as the second most important determinant, academic and scientific reputation (ACADM) as the third and working conditions (WCON) as the fourth determinant of internal reputation. The reputation equation with the contribution of each factor to the variance is summarised as: Reputation: INNO (51.4%); JSAT (7%); ACADM (2.3%); WCON (1%). This result confirms the result of the UK study by Jones (1996) which established innovatory climate and job satisfaction as the main determinants of internal reputation amongst RandD scientists in UK.