The Moderating Effects of Virtuality on the Antecedents and Outcome of NPD Team Trust

The fundamental dynamics of virtual and traditional face-to-face teams may be very different. The purpose of this study is to empirically examine and assess the moderating effects of virtuality on the antecedents and outcome of trust, where virtuality is measured along a continuum from face to face (no virtuality) to fully virtual rather than the more common approach of dichotomizing teams into two groups (i.e., face to face and virtual). The sample includes 116 different new product development teams from a variety of industries. The antecedents of trust that are studied are familiarity, goal clarity, training, relationship conflict, and process conflict. The outcome of trust is analyzed by determining how the impact of trust on cooperation changes as the level of virtuality changes. Primary findings are as follows: (1) Relationship conflict can be more detrimental to virtual teams than face-to-face teams because it is very difficult for team members of virtual teams to resolve their interpersonal disputes; (2) goal clarity is more important for face-to-face teams and less important for virtual teams in creating trust among team members; and (3) the impact of trust on cooperation is less for virtual teams than face-to-face teams. The primary implication for researchers and practice of these findings is that the role and importance of trust in virtual teams needs to be reevaluated. Managers using virtual teams need to realize that interpersonal relationships in virtual teams do not evolve in the same manner as face-to-face teams and may require different management techniques to be successful.     

Determinants of New Product Development Team Performance: A Meta‐analytic Review

New product development (NPD) has become a critical determinant of firm performance. There is a considerable body of research examining the factors that influence a firm's ability to successfully develop and introduce new products. Vital to this success is the creation and management of NPD teams. While the evidence for the use of NPD teams and the factors that determine their success is accumulating, there is still a lack of clarity on the team‐level variables that are most impactful on NPD success. This meta‐analytic study examines the effects of NPD team characteristics on three different measures of success: effectiveness (market success), efficiency (meeting budgets and schedules), and speed‐to‐market, requiring incorporation of a broader set of team variables than previous studies in order to capture more factors explaining NPD outcomes. Unlike a typical empirical study that considered no more than two team variables to predict NPD performance, this study combines research spanning eight team variables including team input variables (team tenure, functional diversity, team ability, and team leadership) and team process variables (internal and external team communication, group cohesiveness, and goal clarity). Results from 38 studies were aggregated to estimate the meta‐analytic effect sizes for each of the variables. Using the meta‐analytic results, a path analytic model of NPD success was estimated to isolate the unique effects of team characteristics on NPD effectiveness and efficiency. Results indicate that team leadership, team ability, external communication, goal clarity, and group cohesiveness are the critical determinants of NPD team performance. NPD teams with considerable experience and led by a transformational leader are more successful at developing new products. Effective boundary spanning within and outside the organization and a shared understanding of project objectives are paramount to success. Group cohesiveness is also an important predictor of NPD outcomes confirming the importance of esprit de corps within the team. The findings provide product development managers with a blueprint for creating high‐performance NPD teams.     

First among Equals: The Effect of Team Leader Characteristics on the Internal Dynamics of Cross‐Functional Product Development Teams*

Drawing on the path‐goal theory of leadership, the present study examines the effect of team leader characteristics on an array of conflict resolution behavior, collaboration, and communication patterns of cross‐functional new product development (NPD) teams. A hierarchical linear model analysis based on a survey of 246 members from 64 NPD teams suggests that participative management style and initiation of goal structure by the team leader exert the strongest influence on internal team dynamics. Both these leadership characteristics had a positive effect on functional conflict resolution, collaboration, and communication quality within the NPD team while discouraging dysfunctional conflict resolution and formal communications. Comparatively, team leader's consideration, initiation of process structure, and position had a surprisingly weak effect on internal team dynamics. Further, the findings underscore the differential effects on various dimensions of team dynamics, the importance of controlling for project and team characteristics, and the use of multilevel modeling for studying nested phenomena related to NPD teams. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

The role of sales team intragroup conflict on critical job outcomes

Sales teams are often structured into groups by territories, product categories, or hierarchical levels of salespeople which provide support to one another while counter-intuitively competing for individual resources, rewards, and promotions. We posit that the impact of conflict within the sales team (sales team intragroup conflict) on critical individual-level job outcomes (job satisfaction and intent to turnover) is contingent upon two loci of influences: individually-influenced goal orientations (learning and performance) and managerially-influenced justice perceptions (procedural and distributive). We empirically examine sales team intragroup conflict through a primary data collection of 195 distributor salespeople organized into 20 geographically dispersed teams. Our results largely support our hypotheses that there are nuanced effects across the loci of influences, such that in conflict-laden environments, having a performance orientation or perception of organizational distributive justice enhance job satisfaction, while a perception of organizational procedural justice decreases job satisfaction. Thus, we answer the call to better understand the role of conflict in marketing exchanges.     

The Effects of Cognitive Problem-Solving Orientation and Technological Familiarity on Faster New Product Development

This study examines the relationships between speed of development and the cognitive problemsolving orientations of both members of the team and the project leader when they work with more familiar or less familiar technologies. Edward McDonough and Gloria Barczak collected data from 32 new product development projects in 12 British companies. They report that technological familiarity moderates the relationship between speed of development and the cognitive problem-solving orientation of both project leaders and project teams and they explore implications of these results for R&D managers.     

Cross-functional integration as a knowledge transformation mechanism: Implications for new product development

The importance of cross-functional integration (CFI) teams involving workers with multiple forms of functional expertise to work on new product development cannot be overemphasized. CFI is an organic structure and it allows the team members' tacit knowledge embedded in individuals to be realized in the new product development team's collective knowledge - a holistic appreciation and understanding about how to achieve new product development goals. Specifically, despite the pivotal role of CFI and knowledge appreciation in new product development teams, scholars appear to have overlooked the integration of individual level factors, team level factors, individual tacit knowledge, and group collective knowledge within the context of achieving the new product development objectives. Adopting knowledge, CFI, and socialization theories, we propose a conceptual framework that stipulates that the factors at the team level (goal congruence, task cohesion, interpersonal cohesion, and transformational leadership) and the qualification of team members (common knowledge, functional expertise, and their positions in the network) influence the effectiveness of tacit-to-collective knowledge transformation.     

Technical Professionals in Cross-functional Teams: Their Quality of Work Life

The idea that R&;D professionals typically spend a considerable amount of their time working as members of teams makes sense. After all, plenty of research indicates that the use of cross-functional teams improves the effectiveness of product development efforts. However, the increasing use of cross-functional teams raises an important question for researchers and R&;D practitioners: Does the use of cross-functional teams improve the quality of work life for technical professionals?Rene Cordero, George F. Farris, and Nancy DiTomaso address this question in study of 1,714 R&;D professionals working on projects. They suggest that being a member of a cross-functional team may be more demanding than working as a member of a functional project group. On the other hand, they expect that working on a cross-functional project team may be more rewarding than working in a functional project group. Their study tests these hypotheses by examining the relationships between measures of the extent to which respondents work on cross-functional teams and five measures each of the participants’ job demands and positive job outcomes.The study identifies positive relationships between working on cross-functional teams and the five positive job outcomes studied: job growth, job security, membership in successful teams, earning money, and job satisfaction. The study finds less consistent and weaker relationships between working on cross-functional teams and the five job demands studied. Specifically, the study identifies positive relationships between working on cross-functional teams and the following job demands: effort, job involvement, and considering a lot of difference of opinion. The results of this study do not find a conclusive relationship between cross-functional team membership and time pressure. And contrary to expectations, the study finds a negative relationship between working on cross-functional teams and job stress.Comparing the responses of participants who work on project teams with those who do not, the results of the study indicate that respondents who work on project teams face greater job demands than positive job outcomes. However, working on cross-functional teams seems to increase positive job outcomes more than job demands. In other words, working on cross-functional teams appears to increase the quality of work life for the technical professionals in this study.     

Can You Hear Me Now? Communication in Virtual Product Development Teams*

Globalization and technological advances are driving organizations to extend the boundaries of new product development (NPD) teams from traditional colocated settings to dispersed or virtual settings. Virtual NPD teams have a wide array of information and communication technologies (ICTs) at their disposal. ICTs allow team members to communicate and collaborate as they cope with the opportunities and challenges of cross‐boundary work. The purpose of this paper is to explore ICT use by members of virtual NPD teams. This study presents an exploratory test and integration of two competing perspectives of media use in virtual teams: media capacity theories and social dynamic media theories. Specifically, this paper examines the role of task type, organizational context, and ICT type as critical contingency variables affecting ICT use. It also examines how different patterns of ICT use relate to individual perceptions of team performance. The findings from this study of 184 members of virtual NPD teams in three global firms suggest that communication via ICTs in virtual NPD teams is contingent on a range of factors.     

Product Development and Learning in Project Teams: The Challenges Are the Benefits*

The value of teams in new product development (NPD) is undeniable. Both the interdisciplinary nature of the work and industry trends necessitate that professionals from different functions work together on development projects to create the highest‐quality product in the shortest time. Understanding the conditions that facilitate teamwork has been a pursuit of researchers for nearly a half century. The present paper reviews existing literature on teams and team learning in organizational behavior and technology and innovation to offer insights for research on NPD teams. Building on prior work, the organizational benefits of NPD teams are summarized, and five attributes of these teams are identified that hinder attainment of their potential: (1) project complexity; (2) cross‐functionality; (3) temporary membership; (4) fluid team boundaries; and (5) embeddedness in organizational structures. It is argued here that effective management of these five attributes allows not only organization‐level benefits but also team‐level benefits in the form of new capabilities and team member resilience. The critical roles of leadership and of communication and conflict management training are then highlighted as strategies for overcoming the challenges to team effectiveness in NPD as well as for realizing five team benefits: (1) project management skills; (2) broad perspective; (3) teaming skills; (4) expanded social network; and (5) boundary‐spanning skills. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these ideas for conducting future team research.     

An investigation of the use of global, virtual, and colocated new product development teams

This paper presents the results of an investigation of differences between global, virtual and colocated new product development (NPD) teams. Specifically, we examined whether and how these three types of teams differed in terms of usage, challenges, and performance. A survey of PDMA members was undertaken to collect the data. Out of 103 firms participating in the survey, 54 had used or were using global teams for some of their NPD efforts. Overall, we found that the use of global teams in our respondent firms is rapidly increasing. Our respondents indicated that by the year 2001, approximately one out of every five NPD teams in their companies are likely to be global. However, our respondents also expect that their companies will be using multiple types of teams that is, global, virtual, and colocated, to develop their new products. Our findings also suggest that global teams generally face greater behavioral and project management challenges than either colocated or virtual teams. Global team performance is also lower than the performance of virtual or colocated teams. Are these challenges associated with poorer performance? In examining this question, our results suggest that greater project management challenges are associated with lower performance, for all three types of teams. Surprisingly, behavioral challenges were not associated with performance for any team type. Our results suggest that firms face different problems associated with managing each type of NPD team—global, virtual and colocated. To effectively manage each type of team may, in turn, require that companies and their managers employ different solutions to these different problems. Additionally, companies may find that the preparation they provide to their managers and team members to work in these different team environments may also need to be different. Further research is clearly needed to address these managerial implications.     

Structural and contextual correlates of charged behavior in product development teams

Firms increasingly use cross‐functional teams to develop new products, yet we know little about the processes that make teams excel. Although studies have focused on within‐team processes like cooperation between and integration of individuals from various functional areas, some emerging literature suggests that the processes that make teams excel are richer and more complex than cooperation and integration. In order to capture the processes that lead to excellent market performance of new products, we introduce the concept of charged team behavior, the extent to which cross‐functional product development teams are enthusiastically and jointly driven to develop superior new products. Charged team behavior captures not only the drive, commitment, and joy of team members, but also their collaborative behaviors to achieve an exceptional outcome. We propose and test a series of hypotheses concerning how charged behavior affects new product market performance and how charged behavior is, in turn, influenced by both team structural characteristics (physical proximity, team longevity, and outcome interdependence) and contextual factors (senior management encouragement to take risk, quality orientation, exposure to customer input, extent of competition, and interdepartmental connectedness). It is particularly important to examine the antecedents of charged behavior because there are concerns that some of the team‐related factors generally considered to be useful for teams may not necessarily lead to charged teams. Data from new consumer product development teams is analyzed though structural equation modeling for hypothesis testing. We find evidence that highly charged teams are more likely to develop successful new products. Results also indicate that outcome interdependence, exposure to customer input, extent of competition, and interdepartmental connectedness are positively related to charged behavior. Physical proximity, team longevity, encouragement to take risk, and quality orientation do not improve teams' charged behavior. Data suggests that charged team behavior: 1) fully mediates the effects of outcome interdependence and interdepartmental connectedness on performance, 2) partially mediates the influence of exposure to customer input and the extent of competition on performance, and 3) does not mediate the effects of quality orientation and physical proximity on performance. Our study highlights the importance of creating highly charged product development teams in order to achieve exceptional performance. Further, our results indicate that some of the factors suggested by traditional social psychology research for enhancing team effectiveness (e.g., physical proximity and team longevity) may not necessarily create charged teams. Instead, charged teams need a special arrangement, in which members are accountable to the team and where their evaluations and rewards are also linked to the performance of the team. In addition, although a strong emphasis on quality is considered to be beneficial for new products, as our results indicate, such emphasis cannot create a charged atmosphere. Moreover, our research suggests that if the organization structure does not permit frequent contact between individuals across functional boundaries, the creation of a strongly charged team and development of a successful new product will be hindered.     

A multilevel investigation of factors influencing creativity in NPD teams

Understanding creativity in the context of a new product development (NPD) team is of paramount importance, especially in the high-technology industry where creativity is a key resource. Building on the mood-as-input model, this study examines how contextual factors (organizational support and organizational control) moderate the relationship between team affective tone and team creativity. The data collected comprise 343 sets of responses involving 106 NPD teams drawn from high-technology firms. The results of this study show that negative affective tone relates positively to team creativity when organizational support is high and organizational control is low, but the linkage between positive affective tone and team creativity as moderated by context factors is found to be insignificant. This article likewise includes research limitations, future research directions, and theoretical and managerial implications.     

Soaking It Up: Absorptive Capacity in Interorganizational New Product Development Teams

Prior research has acknowledged the importance of an organization's absorptive capacity—the ability to acquire new knowledge and information, assimilate, transform, and exploit it—for innovation purposes. Because innovations are usually developed by project teams, this suggests that absorptive capacity, as a construct, may also be usefully applied at the team level. Consequently, this study developed a measure for team‐level absorptive capacity, investigated the potential influencing factors, and examined its relationship to team effectiveness in terms of product innovativeness in an interorganizational context. Specifically, building on the theory of homophily and information and decision‐making theories, three factors (social‐category similarity, work‐style similarity, and knowledge complementarity between the recipient and the partner organization teams) were identified as likely antecedents of team absorptive capacity. The hypotheses were tested on data from 98 interorganizational new product development teams and included responses from team members, team leaders, and team‐external managers. With regard to the antecedents of team absorptive capacity in interorganizational settings, the results showed a significant positive association with partners' work‐style similarity and an inverted U‐shaped relationship with partners' knowledge complementarity. Social‐category similarity was not significantly associated with team absorptive capacity. We also examined whether team absorptive capacity was related to interorganizational team effectiveness and found a significant positive relationship between team absorptive capacity and product innovativeness. The study demonstrates that absorptive is indeed related to team effectiveness outcomes in an interorganizational context, which underlines the importance of team‐level absorptive capacity for product innovation management and suggests paying more attention to the lower levels of absorptive capacity.     

Team control mode,workers' creativity,and new product innovativeness

Scholars of creativity and innovation argue that successful innovations originate from the creative ideas of workers. However, few studies have empirically examined how management mechanisms, such as the control mode adopted by the new product development team, may work together with workers' creativity to deliver a successful new product. Drawing on the theory of opposing action strategies of team innovation, we propose that different team control modes may work together with team members' creativity to jointly influence the innovativeness of teamwork outcomes. With survey data collected from different sources in new product development teams, we find that restrictive control can effectively help teams composed of very creative members to successfully develop innovative new products. Conversely, promotive control can effectively help teams composed of less creative members to deliver innovative new products.     

Spurring Cross‐Functional Integration for Higher New Product Performance: A Group Effectiveness Perspective*

Spurring integration among functional specialists so they collectively create successful, or high‐performing, new products is a central interest of innovation practitioners and researchers. Firms are increasingly assembling cross‐functional new product development (NPD) teams for this purpose. However, integration of team members' divergent orientations and expertise is notoriously difficult to achieve. Individuals from distinct functions such as design, marketing, manufacturing, and research and development (R&D) are often assigned to NPD teams but have contrasting backgrounds, priorities, and thought worlds. If not well managed, this diversity can yield unproductive conflict and chaos rather than successful new products. Firms are thus looking for avenues of integrating the varied expertise and orientations within these cross‐functional teams. The aim of this study is to address two important and not fully resolved questions: (1) does cross‐functional integration in NPD teams actually improve new product performance; and if so, (2) what are ways to strengthen integration? The study began by developing a model of cross‐functional integration from the perspective of the group effectiveness theory. The theory has been used to explain the performance of a wide range of small, complex work groups; this study is the first application of the theory to NPD teams. The model developed from this theory was then tested by conducting a survey of dual informants in 206 NPD teams in an array of U.S. high‐technology companies. In answer to the first research question, the findings show that cross‐functional integration indeed contributes to new product performance as long conjectured. This finding is important in that it highlights that bringing together the skills, efforts, and knowledge of differing functions in an NPD team has a clear and coveted payoff: high‐performing new products. In answer to the second question, the findings indicate that both intra‐ (or internal) and extra‐ (or external) team factors contribute and codetermine cross‐functional integration. Specifically, social cohesion and superordinate identity as internal team factors and market‐oriented reward system, planning process formalization, and managerial encouragement to take risks as external team factors foster integration. These findings underscore that spurring integration requires addressing the conditions inside as well as outside NPD teams. These specialized work groups operate as organizations within organizations; recognition of this in situ arrangement is the first step toward better managing and ensuring rewards from team integration. Based on these findings, managerial and research implications were drawn for team integration and new product performance.     

Continuity,Change, and New Product Performance: The Role of Stream Concentration*

Product development teams often face the challenge of designing radically new products that cater at the same time to the revealed tastes and expectations of existing customers. In new product development projects, this tension guides critical choices about continuity or change concerning product attributes and team composition. Research suggests these choices interact, but it is not clear whether they are complements or substitutes and if the level of change in one should match or not the level of change in the other. In this article, we examine the interaction between product attribute change, team change, and a new team-level factor, which we term stream concentration, as it captures differences among team members in terms of familiarity with the knowledge domain of the new product being developed. We measure stream concentration as team members’ prior NPD experience within a given set of products and assess its impacts on the management of change in new product development projects using longitudinal data from the music industry. We analyze 2621 new product development projects between 1962 and 2008 involving 34,265 distinct team members. Results show that stream concentration is a critical factor in new product development projects that, together with product attributes and team composition, affects new product performance. We discuss implications for research and practice.     

The role of functional and demographic diversity on new product creativity and the moderating impact of project uncertainty

Earlier studies have shown inconsistency in the impact of team diversity on the effective functioning of New Product Development (NPD) teams. This inconsistency has been attributed to the insufficient amount of research on a possible complex (non-monotonic) relationship between team diversity and team performance and the possible boundary conditions of this relationship. Addressing numerous calls for future studies on these issues, we examined whether an inverted-U relationship exists between team diversity (i.e., functional and demographic) and its outcomes (i.e., new product creativity), using project uncertainty as a key moderator. The results of an empirical study with a sample of 103 new product development teams showed an inverted U-shaped functional diversity–new product creativity relationship. Moreover, the results showed that the direct relationship between functional diversity and new product creativity was stronger when project uncertainty was high as opposed to when it was low. On the other hand, the direct relationship between demographic diversity and new product creativity was weaker when project uncertainty was high as opposed to when it was low.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Unlearning in New Product Development Teams

Unlearning, which first appeared almost 30 years ago as a subprocess of the organizational learning process, has received only limited attention in the literature. Rather than building on empirical research, the existing scholarship is largely anecdotal, aimed at reviewing the literature and generating new insights. Further, unlearning studies tend to analyze the organizational level and neglect smaller units such as work groups and teams. To address this gap in the understanding of unlearning, this article empirically investigates unlearning in work groups in general and new product development (NPD) teams in particular. This study, based on the literature of organizational memory and change, operationalized team unlearning as changes in beliefs and routines during team‐based projects and then discussed the importance of unlearning behavior in NPD teams. Specifically it was argued that unlearning guards beliefs and routines against rigidity to cope with environmental turbulence. This is of particular note when rigid product development procedures and group beliefs inhibit the reception and evaluation of new market and technology information and reduce the value of perceived new information. To test the antecedents and consequences of the team unlearning model, 319 NPD teams were investigated. Using structural equation modeling, it was found that (1) team crisis and anxiety have a direct impact on team unlearning; (2) environmental turbulence also has a direct impact on both team crisis and anxiety and team unlearning; and (3) after team beliefs and project routines have changed, implementing new knowledge or information positively affects new product success. Specifically, the findings revealed that changes in team members' collective beliefs in accordance with environmental changes and the in‐process planning or adjustment of project work activities and procedures as the projects evolve enable teams to develop and launch new products successfully. Also, results indicated that team crisis and anxiety in NPD projects assist team members in revising their previous beliefs and routines when project teams are performing in turbulent environments. This article suggests that managers can enhance team unlearning by (1) creating a sense of urgency by introducing an artificial crisis; and (2) avoiding the groupthink phenomena by bringing in an outsider to challenge existing policies and procedures, and training the team on lateral thinking. In addition, managers can plan project activities in a flexible manner that allows changes as the project evolves to facilitate team unlearning. However, managers should also be cautious when promoting team unlearning. Without careful and considerable evaluation, change in beliefs and routines can cause information/knowledge loss.     

An Exploratory Model of Interpersonal Cohesiveness in New Product Development Teams

There has been a heavy emphasis in new product development (NPD) research on intrateam issues such as communication, trust, and conflict management. Interpersonal cohesiveness, however, has received scant attention. In addition, there are conflicting findings regarding the effects of close‐knit teams, which seem to have a beneficial effect up to a point, after which the tight bond becomes a detriment. This paper addresses these issues by introducing an exploratory model of interpersonal cohesiveness→NPD performance that includes antecedents, consequences, and moderating factors. Antecedents of interpersonal cohesiveness include clan culture, formalization, integration, and political dominance of one department, while consequences are groupthink, superordinate identity, and, ultimately, external/internal new product (NP) performance. The relationships among interpersonal cohesiveness, groupthink, and superordinate identity appear to be influenced by two moderating factors: team norms and goal support. Additionally, product type is identified as a moderator on the effects of both groupthink and superordinate identity on external NP performance. The model is built from two sources: a synthesis of the literature in small group dynamics and NPD, and qualitative research conducted across 12 NPD teams. Individual team leaders were interviewed first, followed by interviews with two additional members on each team, for a total of 36 interviews. In keeping with the goals of qualitative research, the interviews and analysis were used to identify and define aspects of interpersonal cohesiveness rather than to test a preconceived model. Representation of different industries and product types was sought intentionally, and variance in NP innovativeness as well as in NP market success/profitability became key criteria in sample selection. The exploratory model and propositions developed in this study provide a framework for understanding the role of interpersonal cohesiveness in NPD teams and its direct and indirect effects on NP performance. Although a significant amount of research on cohesiveness has been conducted in previous studies of small groups, the narrow laboratory settings of that research have limited the generalizability of the findings. This study therefore serves as a useful starting point for future theory development involving interpersonal cohesiveness in NPD. It also provides a guide for managers in dealing with team cohesiveness.     

Attribution Biases in the Evaluation of New Product Development Team Members*

Managers are often concerned with the potential negative reputation impact of being assigned to a new product development project. Social psychology theories, and in particular the group attribution error theory, suggest that their worries might be justified, with individual team members being evaluated on the basis of the overall project performance, without regard for the processes by which the team outcome was reached. The objective of this paper is to empirically test for the existence of such biases in the evaluation of new product development team members. For this purpose, three independent experiments based on scenarios test the extent to which the group attribution error is at play in the evaluation of new product development team members and the extent to which it can be removed. Overall, this paper indicates that this bias does indeed affect the evaluation of new product development team members as well as decisions based on these evaluations. In the studies presented in this paper, analysis of variance showed that subjects inferred that team members' attitudes were consistent with the decision made and failed to adjust adequately for the decision rule used. Subjects then used these summary judgments as the basis for deciding on reward allocations and making competence attributions about the team members. In Study 1 , the decision rule used was either a vote or a team leader decision, and therefore the bias might have been explained by the lack of information available. Study 2 , however, provided unambiguous information about team members' positions, yet subjects did not adequately take this information into account. Study 3 replicated these results with experienced new product team managers, suggesting that theses biases are likely to be at play in the workplace. Moreover, subjects in Studies 2 and 3 felt quite confident that their judgments were being fair, even in the cases where these judgments truly were not, which suggests a lack of awareness of the bias on their part. The robustness of this bias should be cause for concerns for managers working in new product development teams or involved in the evaluation of the performance of such teams. The studies conducted in this paper suggest that team members can get unfairly rewarded or punished for decisions over which they have little or no control and that their reputation can also get affected by these decisions. Moreover, the fact that the group attribution error affected evaluations even in the case where experienced participants had specific information about team members' positions suggests that this bias will not be easy to remove.