The conflict of innovators and adaptors in the business processes of research and development in a company: the socio-physical approach to resolving contradictions

The article is devoted to studying a social conflict between two groups of employees of a company during the process of development and implementation of innovation – the innovators and the adaptors. The purpose of the study is to justify the opportunity and the potential effects of applying the new approach based on socio-physical analogies to model and manage the conflicts in research and development process in a company. The author suggests a methodology based on contemporary post-non-classical paradigm formed on the principles of global evolutionism, interdisciplinarity, openness and non-linearity; on socio-physical approach to assessing the conflict; on the historical method of studying social phenomena in time and determining the connection between the past, present and future; on criticaldialectical method of analyzing the contradictions between social groups as the source of transformation; on the systematic analysis of the conflict as a complex self-developing in time process and the systematic synthesis for resolving social contractions in the research and development process in a company. The author introduces a method for classifying employees into two groups depending on their attitude to new ideas, solutions and way of behavior in solving creative tasks – the innovators and the adaptors. It is believed that project teams in development and implementation of innovation should consist of employees of both types. However, working in one team with people of antagonistic views can cause conflict situations. It is justified that to model and manage such social conflicts it is possible to apply methods of socio-physics ensuring the representation of conflict as a change in behavioral reactions and aimed at ensuring the cohesion of group members and their depolarization. The significance of the study lies in providing the opportunity to analyze the contradictions of the participants’ interests in the process of their interaction in performing the tasks of development and implementation of innovation on the basis of socio-physical approach. The developed methodology takes into account the revealed peculiarities of the research and development process, complex intra-group and intergroup relations of the confl icting groups, allows working out the requirements to modelling the process of the conflict interaction and forecasting its development scenarios.