Issues for Management Thought and Research

One of the tenets of the editors of The Journal of Product Innovation Management is the principle, probably first enunciated by social scientist Kurt Lewin, that there is nothing more practical than a good theory. That principle is one that draws together academics and practicing managers to the journal's task of advancing the management of product innovation. It is a principle that says to academics that their theories must meet the test of utility, and to managers that it can be useful to develop a theoretical perspective.
Questions of practice and theory emerged in the first two issues of the journal when members of the Editorial Board presented a series of viewpoints on the issues they thought would be significant for the future of product innovation management. These were viewpoints that questioned our current practices and suggested     

Significant Issues for the Future of Product Innovation

In recognition of JPIM's second decade of publication, the Editor-in-Chief solicited a series of thoughtful contributions from members of the Editorial Board. Members were asked to reflect upon changes and opportunities that they see influencing our profession during the coming years. In this issue, Timothy Devinney asks why globalization has so far had so little impact on many companies' approaches to the management of product innovation. He wonders if innovation is an inherently local activity, or whether other explanations are at work. Among them, he singles out the way firms acquire and process information as an important influence on innovation practices. Too often, we examine markets on a national rather than on a cultural basis, and this limits and even distorts our ability to formulate appropriate strategies and to detect opportunities. Like earlier contributions, this short essay is designed to introduce new perspectives. It is not essential that you agree with the recommendations, but we hope that you are stimulated as you reflect on the included issues.     

Expertise and Participation in the Facebook Oversight Board: From Reason to Will

This paper explores two strategies that the Facebook Oversight Board has available to build its own legitimacy. It argues that the Board's members perform as apolitical decision-makers. With that goal, the Board has portrayed international human rights law as a set of exogenous and universal principles that human rights experts can translate and implement on social media. The paper suggests that, instead of hiding its power behind alleged translations of higher principles, the Board could try to build its legitimacy by promoting the wider involvement of civil society. The Board could wield its power to strengthen civil society's participation in Facebook's drafting of content moderation rules. The Board could then present itself as a legitimate body not because it applies international law but because it encourages the participation of more actors and defers to their judgment. Despite the many limitations of this proposal, it would include more actors in the governance of online speech instead of shielding experts from participatory politics.     

Significant Issues for the Future of Product Innovation

What's happening in the world of product innovation? What are the tough issues that managers are facing? And what's going to happen in the remaining years of this decade? In this article, several members of the Editorial Board of The Journal of Product Innovation Management offer their ideas about where the important problems lie. This is the fodder for a good round table discussion and through the medium of this journal we'll engage in such a discussion in this and a subsequent issue.     

Managing Conflict in Software Development Teams: A Multilevel Analysis

For a new product development (NPD) organization, a little conflict can be a good thing. Healthy disagreements can push project team members or different functional groups in an organization to pursue more in-depth, insightful analysis. This type of creative tension can help to engender an environment that encourages innovation and thus keeps NPD efforts free from the business-as-usual doldrums. However, management must ensure that conflict remains on a healthy level. David H. Gobeli, Harold F. Koenig, and Iris Bechinger note that conflict must be managed not only to increase the satisfaction of project team members, but also to achieve strategic project success. To provide better understanding of the important issues in conflict management, they examine the effects of three conflict factors on software development project success: context, conflict intensity, and conflict management style. Using survey responses from 117 software professionals and managers, they develop a multi-level framework of success versus conflict for team-based, software development projects. Within this framework, they examine context, conflict intensity, and conflict management approaches at the team and organization levels. For the participants in this study, unresolved conflict has a strong, negative effect on overall software product success and customer satisfaction. Project team member satisfaction decreases substantially with higher intensity conflict at the organization level, and even more strongly at the project level. For the respondents to this study, the combined effects of conflict intensity and conflict management style on project success are significant, but they are not as great as the combined effects of such context variables as company goals, group dynamics, and management support. Two conflict management styles—confronting and give and take—have beneficial effects on success at the organization level for the firms in this study. Smoothing, withdrawal, and forcing all have negative effects, although only forcing has a statistically significant negative effect. In general terms, the results suggest that management should guard against frequent use of the dysfunctional management styles—withdrawal, smoothing, and forcing. The results suggest that emphasis on confrontation—that is, true problem solving—is essential at the project level, even if a give-and-take style is better tolerated at the organization level.     

Life expectancy of international cartels: An empirical analysis

This paper quantifies the importance of the various determinants of life expectancy for international cartels active throughout this century. I explain cartels' optimal duration as a function of market structure and demand growth and estimate the associated parameters recognizing that durability cannot be negative. According to the results, increases in either market shares or cartel concentration prolong life expectancy. Faster demand growth shortens cartel durability but this effect is not reliable. I also find that growth effects are sensitive to both the period of activity and the country coverage.The calculations in this paper use LIMDEP version 5.0. I am grateful to participants in seminars at the Federal Reserve Board and the U.S. International Trade Commission; to Alexander David, Jon Faust, Michael Gibson, William Greene, James Griffin, William Helkie, Dale Henderson, John Irons, Doug Irwin, Michael Leahy, Matthew Pritsker, Stephen Salant, and Janice Shack-Marquez for several suggestions. I also received very useful comments from two anonymous referees. The views expressed in this paper are solely the responsibility of the author and should not be interpreted as reflecting those of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or other members of its staff.     

The First Twenty Years of AEEUEA

Editors' Note: At AREUEA's 1985 annual meeting, a special session was held to celebrate the 20th anniversary of AREUEA. The session was proposed by George Gau, the 1985 program chairman, and chaired by Patric H. Hender-shott, the 1985 president. George and Pat selected four past presidents to discuss the first four five-year periods of AREUEA's history. The presentations were so informative that the Board of Directors proposed publication in some form to preserve the historical record of AREUEA. With the financial assistance of the Homer Hoyt Institute and the efforts of Marc A. Weiss, we are pleased to publish a slightly edited version of the four presentations.
An appendix to this article lists the officers and members of AREUEA's Board of Directors since 1965 (any corrections should be drawn to the editors' attention). We note that four individuals have served on AREUEA's Board for a decade or longer: William B. Brueggeman, Hugh O. Nourse, Maury Seldin and Halbert C. Smith. All were president and either editor or secretary-treasurer.     

Evaluating and comparing salesmen's performance

The measurement and evaluation of the performance of salesmen is complicated in most firms by the situational, environmental, and personal variables involved. This complexity is further increased when management attempts performance comparisons among several salesmen or among an entire sales force. Territorial differences, multiplicity of products, and differences in backgrounds among salesmen are just a few of the factors of variability that compound management's performance measurement and evaluation tasks.In spite of these difficulties, the management process requires that the performance of salesmen be measured and compared to predetermined standards. Subjective judgements have frequently taken the place of objective analysis, particularly as to the overall or composite performance of salesmen, because of the difficulties sales managers encounter in the determination of composite measures of performance. Many have discussed the determination and use of objectives or quotas for salesmen, and some have been concerned with the development of composite measures of salesmen performance. However, most have suggested methods that require quantitative skills not possessed by many sales managers and salesmen. The application of computers to the quantitative methods that have been suggested does alleviate the computational problem but not the equally important understanding requirement. Sales personnel, particularly field managers and their salesmen, should thoroughly understand and accept the methods by which standards of sales performance are determined, in addition to the standards or quotas themselves if they are to accept evaluation against these standards [1].The purpose of this article is to discuss the various determinants of salesmen's performance and to present a practical analytical method for calculating and evaluating the overall performance of salesmen that will permit cross-comparison among all members of the sales force irrespective of differences in assignments and objectives. A hypothetical example is then presented utilizing a tabular analysis format equally appropriate for use by home office analysts or by field sales managers and their salesmen.     

Team member experiences in new product development: views from the trenches

Although cross-functional teams are often used for new product development (NPD), many companies struggle to implement them successfully. Through in-depth interviews with 71 team members from 18 companies in a variety of technology-based industries, this study focuses on the experiences of the people who actually do much of the work of NPD (team members) and explores their perceptions and attitudes about cross-functional team assignments. The purpose of our study is to identify the factors that influence and shape NPD team member experiences. Our results suggest that although NPD work can be rewarding and productive, NPD team members are often neglected by other team members, project leaders, and senior management. This sense of neglect has important implications for all of these constituencies, but particularly for senior management.     

Significant Issues for the Future of Product Innovation

In recognition of JPIM's eleventh year of publication, the editor-in-chief solicited a series of thoughtful contributions from members of the editorial board. Members were asked to reflect upon changes and opportunities that they see influencing our profession during the coming decade. In this issue, Chris Voss examines our growing recognition of the interdependence of a variety of business processes: product innovation, product development, process innovation, technology acquisition, industrial design, total quality management, and quality function deployment. He supports the need to establish tighter linkages among these important elements of a successful new products program, which he labels "total innovation management." Like earlier contributions, this short essay is designed to introduce new perspectives. It is not essential that you agree with the recommendations, but we hope that you are stimulated as you reflect on the included issues.     

Sustaining the Flow of External Ideas: The Role of Dual Social Identity across Communities and Organizations

Firm‐hosted online communities are increasingly a part of innovation efforts that seek to provide a flow of external ideas into organizations. However, many online communities do not gain traction or die out over time. One possible but underresearched driver of sustained engagement by members of firm‐hosted communities is a social identity that makes community members feel like they are part of the firm. We sought to empirically derive the organizational practices that support community members having a dual social identity with both communities and organizations. We completed extensive field work and over 90 interviews regarding two firms that had a history of sustained engagement by members of their communities: T‐shirt firm Threadless and automotive firm Local Motors. We identified eight organizational practices that supported dual social identity. Four of these practices made members perceive a porous boundary between firm and community, including an “open house” policy and hiring from the community. Another four practices made members feel supported in community efforts, including promoting community projects and having top management active in the community. We describe the practices in detail and the implications for firms using online communities as one component of their portfolio of innovation efforts.     

事业部制的发生学探析

从发生学的视角探究事业部制组织结构的产生基础，分析得出：管理是实践的产物；管理是政治的微观应用；管理是文化的产物。对于事业部制的深层次理解有助于中国企业深刻理解并融会贯通的运用这种管理体制。     

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.     

Contingency Organizations and Shared Values: Multiple Logics in Managing Diversification

Two logics of managing diversification have been suggested in the strategic management literature. The first is a very economic and structural approach that emphasizes the contingency fit between strategy and structural arrangements to maximize organizational effectiveness, while the second is a cultural approach that focuses on the use of strong shared values to minimize opportunistic behaviors of members. This paper empirically examines and compares the efficacy of two approaches to managing diversification, by using Taiwanese business groups as the sample. It is found that both approaches can lead to satisfied economic performance and they are supplementary. Diversified firms employing simultaneously two management logics will outperform firms with only one logic.     

对设计单位开展QC小组活动的思考

在设计单位要深入持久地开展QC小组活动,应结合设计单位质量管理体系确定的组织机构,以各专业设计负责人为模块分别建立不同专业的QC小组,对涉及本专业的技术问题以及专业设计中的技术创新,以专业小组形式开展活动;对涉及多专业的技术问题,则以综合性形式开展活动。指出,设计单位不仅应大力提倡开展QC小组活动,而且应不断改进和优化,激发广大QC小组人员的积极性,使QC小组活动不断向纵深发展。     

R&D Project Termination Decisions: Processes, Communication, and Personnel Changes

The decision to terminate a project can demoralize project managers and team members, and increase concerns about job security. For these reasons, managers tend to delay project termination decisions. However, delaying project termination diverts scarce R&D resources from higher potential projects. Ramaiya Balachandra, Klaus K. Brockhoff, and Alan W. Pearson describe the results of a study that explores the manner in which managers inform staff of the decision to terminate or continue a project. Survey respondents are the highest ranking R&D managers in 78 large German, British, and U.S. companies. Respondents were asked to describe the procedures they use for monitoring R&D projects and deciding whether to continue a project. Underlying this research is the belief that more effective management of these processes can improve project team effectiveness, employee relations, and morale. All survey respondents use project monitoring procedures. Most use formal procedures, often supplemented with informal procedures. More than one person usually monitors projects. Project managers, their immediate superiors, and project staff typically have these responsibilities, but respondents also indicate that marketing managers often monitor projects. Compared to U.S. companies, European firms typically involve fewer people in project monitoring. U.S. firms involve more non-R&D personnel in these tasks. Most firms focus on monitoring such variables as time, technical success, and probability of technical success. Staff motivation is the least used monitoring variable. Cost control was mentioned more frequently by German respondents than by respondents from other countries. Decisions regarding the fate of a project usually come from individuals not directly involved with the project. Termination decisions are typically communicated in writing; no respondents use staff meetings to relate such decisions. Following the decision to terminate a project, management faces the difficult task of finding suitable jobs for project team members. Rather than assign an entire team to a new project, management typically disbands a team and assigns its members to other teams. The inherently uneven progress of R&D projects complicates these scheduling problems, and thus compounds the career uncertainty caused by project termination decisions.     

Swedish managers' perceptions of Singaporean work-related values

The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the fundamental work-related cultural values of middle managers of Chinese ethnic origin employed in Swedish companies in Singapore, and to draw comparisons with the perceptions of those values among the Swedish top managers. Using the same set of questionnaire items for both sets of respondents, the Swedish managers were asked to respond as they imagine their Chinese subordinates would do, as a projective technique. The main finding of this study is the considerable amount of misjudgment on the part of Swedish top managers in assessing work-related values of the Singaporean middle managers.Dr. Jan Selmer is Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Företagsekonomiska Institutionen, University of Stockholm, Sweden. He is a Board Director of the Center for Pacific Asia Studies, University of Stockholm. Presently Dr Selmer is a Visiting Senior Teaching Fellow at the School of Management, National University of Singapore.Acknowledgement is given to the Swedish Embassy in Singapore for help and support. The participation of the management of the Swedish companies included in the study (Appendix) is deeply appreciated.     

Applications of computers in R & D management

R & D Managers use computers extensively in solving technical problems. This paper examines the use they make of computers in solving Management problems. Applications of computers to various aspects of R & D programme formulation, project planning, technical information storage and retrieval, management information systems, and computer-aided training have been investigated by many companies and, in some cases, have been implemented. Some of the techniques have become well established but others are still at a development stage. No attempt has been made to evaluate the techniques described. This topic was the subject of a study by a Working Group of the European Industrial Research Management Association (EIRMA), and a report ‘Computers as Aids to R & D Management’ was distributed to members of the Association. EIRMA has now agreed to release information contained in that report and this paper is based on that information updated by the author, who was Chairman of the EIRMA Working Group.     

Applications of computers in R & D management

R & D Managers use computers extensively in solving technical problems. This paper examines the use they make of computers in solving Management problems. Applications of computers to various aspects of R & D programme formulation, project planning, technical information storage and retrieval, management information systems, and computer-aided training have been investigated by many companies and, in some cases, have been implemented. Some of the techniques have become well established but others are still at a development stage. No attempt has been made to evaluate the techniques described.
This topic was the subject of a study by a Working Group of the European Industrial Research Management Association (EIRMA), and a report 'Computers as Aids to R & D Management' was distributed to members of the Association. EIRMA has now agreed to release information contained in that report and this paper is based on that information updated by the author, who was Chairman of the EIRMA Working Group.     

PUBLICATION RECORDS AND TENURE DECISIONS IN THE FIELD OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

To better define levels of accomplishment for publishing journal articles in strategic management, a bibliometric study was performed on the publication records of 96 doctorates in the field whose first post-degree job was in academics. By examining 20 journals that are outlets for research in strategic management, publication records were developed for each individual for the first 5–10 years following receipt of the doctoral degree. Two factors influenced the publication records of these new faculty. Having publications prior to receiving the doctorate and getting a first job at an institution with a graduate program in management were associated with more frequent publishing after an academic career began. As expected, the number of papers published was related to the likelihood of receiving tenure. However, despite the fact that they had produced more papers during the first 5 years than male faculty members and had higher citation rates, female faculty members were less likely to receive tenure. The findings are discussed in terms of institutional policy for hiring and evaluating new faculty.