Information Distribution,Utilization, and Decisions by New Product Development Teams

Typically, organizations use new product development processes composed of activities followed by decision points, where projects are continued or abandoned. A decision maker likely possesses some common information also held by other decision makers and some unique information (that only she/he possesses). If a team relies mainly on overlapping, or common, information, decisions may suffer, but if they share and utilize information originally possessed by a subset of individual members, better decisions can be made. In this paper, the authors designed and conducted four studies to examine the effects of information distribution and utilization on new product team decision‐making. In study 1, the findings show that team members tend to use information possessed by everyone (i.e., common information) but neglect critical information possessed only by one of them (i.e., unique information). This common information bias results in suboptimal new product continuation decisions. In study 2, the interplay between the common information bias and team commitment to the NPD project favored by unique information is examined. The results show that although commitment influences new product development team decisions, the common information bias is stronger. Study 3 was conducted to rule out an alternative explanation for the effect of information distribution—the perception of information importance. In study 4, the focal hypotheses were re‐tested using a different sample to add confidence in the findings.     

Antecedents of Team Intuition and Its Impact on the Success of New Product Development Projects

Research on new product development (NPD) team decision making has identified a number of cognitive mechanisms (e.g., team intelligence, teamwork quality, and charged behavior) that appear to guide NPD teams toward effective decisions. Despite an extensive body of literature on these aspects of NPD team decisions, team intuition has yet to be investigated in the context of NPD teams. Intuition is regarded as a form of information processing that differs from cognitive processes, and is associated with gut feelings, hunches, and mystical insights. Past research on intuition suggests that many managers and teams embrace intuition as an effective approach in response to situations in a turbulent environment where decisions need to be made immediately. Past research also revealed various benefits of intuition in decision making. These are: to speed up decision‐making process, to improve decision outcomes such as higher product quality, and to solve less structured problems (e.g., new product planning). This research examines the impact of team‐related antecedents (e.g., team member experience) and decision‐specific antecedents (e.g., decision importance) on intuition in NPD teams. The moderating impact of environmental turbulence between antecedent variables and intuition, as well as between intuition and team performance, is investigated. To test hypotheses, data were collected from 155 NPD projects in Turkey. The results showed that past team member experience, transactive memory systems (TMS), team empowerment, decision importance, and decision motives are significantly related to team intuition. The results also revealed that team intuition is significantly related to product success and speed‐to‐market, with both high and low levels of market turbulence. The findings of this study present some interesting practical implications to managers in order to improve intuitive skills of NPD teams. First, managers should make sure that team members have the relevant expertise to facilitate effective intuition. Second, managers should encourage and enhance TMS for effective intuition. If team members are not able to gain timely and unhindered access to others who have the needed experience and knowledge, past team member experience becomes idle in order to make effective intuitive judgments. Third, managers concerned with achieving successfully developed products and helping teams to make immediate but accurate decisions during NPD process should assign more power to team members so that they can rely on their intuitive skills.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Reflexivity in New Product Idea Screening*

Pre‐development activities, such as new product idea screening, are considered to play an important role in innovation success. At the screening stage, a management team evaluates new product and service ideas and makes a first go/no‐go decision under high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity. Paying more attention to the decision‐making process in the screening stage appears important because too rigorous a use of rigid evaluation criteria and inflexible methods have been shown to have an adverse effect on market performance of novel products. The present study proposes and tests a model of team‐level antecedents and consequences of reflexivity—the explicit evaluation and discussion of working methods, tools, and criteria within a team. Recently, researchers have proposed that cognitive style and leadership style are major antecedents of decision‐making performance. This study posits that reflexivity offers an explanation of how transformational leadership and cognitive style can eventually affect decision‐making performance in the context of new product idea screening. Results of a survey among 126 top managers from large international firms show that the positive effects of transformational leadership and procedural rationality on the effectiveness and efficiency of screening decision making are largely mediated by reflexivity at the team level. This suggests that screening teams can improve their decision making in the following ways: committee chairs are advised to stimulate openness, develop a stop‐and‐think attitude among screening committee members, and support argument‐based discussion in order to adapt available decision tools, models, and checklists whenever needed. The paper concludes with implications, limitations of the study, and suggestions for further research.     

Marriage and Family Therapy in NPD Teams: Effects of We‐ness on Knowledge Sharing and Product Performance

Drawing on marriage and family therapy (MFT), this paper introduces the concept of we‐ness to new product development (NPD). We‐ness is the shared sense of togetherness family members feel toward each other. We apply we‐ness to NPD as the construct through which people share knowledge at the team, between‐team, and between‐organization levels. The results support the hypotheses that we‐ness increases knowledge sharing and that knowledge sharing increases product performance. In this study, we used regressions to analyze the hypotheses. We found that the greater in‐team we‐ness (H1, t = 3.786, p = .000), between‐team we‐ness (H2, t = 5.411, p = .000), and between‐organization we‐ness (H3, t = 2.940, p = .004) activities there were, the more knowledge sharing in NPD. Results also indicate that knowledge sharing is related to better NPD performance. This paper contrasts team and family as the foundation metaphor to organize people engaged in product development. We argue the team metaphor can be counterproductive in settings where difficult decisions must be made. Teams can lead to individual members suppressing their opinions to “help” the team achieve its goal. Members are expected to sacrifice for the good of the team. That can be adaptive when the task is straightforward. The family metaphor suggests that the group sacrifices for the individual. In a family environment, members protect minority opinions, and in cases where complex, ambiguous decisions must be made individual expertise and insight may come from one person. High‐trust family‐like settings can facilitate sharing sensitive information and norms that can be challenged. The family metaphor suggests a more flexible and tolerant approach to new ideas. At the same time, it is recognized that families can have dysfunctions that can detract from performance. Therefore, managers must carefully apply the use of family‐like settings. The importance for family‐like approaches across organizations seems to be more important as technology complexity increases. Between‐team we‐ness was revealed significantly higher in goods manufacturers than service firms in this study. Small companies need to make extra effort to increase between‐team we‐ness. The idea of approaching product development from a family relations perspective opens up new alternatives for managing people in teams, between teams, and even between organizations. MFT tools to address behaviors and individual performance issues increase the number and nature of managerial tools to increase product performance.     

Innovation Performance in New Product Development Teams in China's Technology Ventures: The Role of Behavioral Integration Dimensions and Collective Efficacy

In emerging markets, technology ventures increasingly rely on new product development (NPD) teams to generate creative ideas and to mold these innovative ideas into streams of new products or services. However, little is known about how behavioral integration (a behavioral team process) and collective efficacy (a motivational team process) jointly facilitate or inhibit team innovation performance in emerging markets—especially in China, the world's largest emerging‐market setting with collectivist and high power distance cultures. Drawing on social cognitive theory and behavioral integration research, this article elucidates the relationships between behavioral integration dimensions (i.e., collaborative behavior, information exchange, and joint decision‐making) and innovation performance and also examines how collective efficacy moderates these relationships in China's NPD teams. Results from a sample of 96 NPD teams in China's technology ventures reveal that information exchange is positively associated with innovation performance. Collaborative behavior positively but marginally influences innovation performance, whereas joint decision‐making does not relate to innovation performance. Moreover, collective efficacy demonstrates an important moderating role. Specifically, both collaborative behavior and joint decision‐making are more positively associated with innovation performance when collective efficacy is higher. In contrast, information exchange is less positively associated with innovation performance when collective efficacy is higher. This study makes important theoretical contributions to the literature on team innovation and behavioral integration in emerging markets by offering a better understanding of how behavioral and motivational team processes jointly shape innovation performance in China's NPD teams. This study also extends social cognitive theory by identifying collective efficacy as a boundary condition for the overall effectiveness of behavioral integration dimensions. In particular, this study highlights the condition under which behavioral integration dimensions facilitate or inhibit NPD team innovation performance in China.     

Investigation of Factors Contributing to the Success of Cross-Functional Teams

Although recent empirical research shows that most firms have implemented cross‐functional teams for the majority of the new product development projects undertaken, they are still finding it hard to ensure that these teams are successful in completing the new product development task. In this article, the author first reviews the vast literature on cross‐functional new product development teams to uncover the array of factors that have previously been demonstrated or hypothesized to relate to cross‐functional team success, when measured at the project level. He then analyzes the responses of 112 new product development professionals to determine which factors are more frequently mentioned as leading to project success. In looking at how to achieve successful teams, many factors have been suggested in the literature by a number of different researchers. The author suggests a model of these factors that divides them into three categories that help achieve success. Setting the stage for product development by developing appropriate project goals, empowering the team with the needed decision‐making power, assigning the appropriate human resources, and creating a productive climate should be related to fostering team success. Of these four factors, appropriate project goals is mentioned most often as being associated with success, followed by empowerment. Several specific team behaviors, including cooperation, commitment to the project, ownership of the project, and respect and trust among team members, also have been posited to contribute to team success. Of these, this research finds that cooperation is mentioned most often as being associated with success, followed by commitment and ownership. Finally, a number of researchers have suggested that team leaders, senior managers, and champions provide enabling support to cross‐functional teams in achieving success. Team leadership is the most frequently mentioned enabler, according to these findings, followed by senior management support. The author's results also show that increased use of cross‐functional teams in new product development is related to higher project success. However, achieving cross‐functional team success appears to be more complicated than previously thought. For example, across the set of factors identified in this research, the most frequently mentioned is obtaining the team behavior of cooperation. Setting appropriate project goals, a stage‐setting step that is completed early in the project, follows closely in relative importance. Finally, providing good team leadership as an enabler is the third most frequently mentioned factor in achieving success. This suggests that companies must work in all dimensions to maximize the probability of achieving team success.     

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.     

CEOs’ Transformational Leadership and Product Innovation Performance: The Roles of Corporate Entrepreneurship and Technology Orientation

Product innovation is an important research topic that has stimulated significant interest among management scholars and practitioners. Leadership has been suggested to be a critical factor affecting product innovation. Numerous studies have documented that transformational leadership positively influences product innovation performance, which is conceptualized as the degree to which a new product and/or service has achieved its market share, sales, rates of asset return, rates of investment return, and profit objectives. However, there is a lack of studies examining the specific means through which transformational leadership influences product innovation performance at the firm level. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the processes through which such effect is achieved and to determine whether corporate entrepreneurship and technology orientation as intervening factors influence this effect. To test the hypotheses, data were collected from 151 matched top management team (TMT) members and chief executive officers (CEOs) from Chinese manufacturing firms. Two separate questionnaires were used to collect the data. TMT members’ questionnaire included measures of CEO's transformational leadership, whereas CEOs’ questionnaire included questions about corporate entrepreneurship, technology orientation, and product innovation performance. Hierarchical linear regression was used to test the hypothesized effects. The results of the analysis provided the support for the fully mediating role of corporate entrepreneurship on the relationship between CEOs' transformational leadership and product innovation performance. In addition, technology orientation was found to significantly moderate the CEOs' transformational leadership–corporate entrepreneurship linkage. Furthermore, the mediated moderation effect of corporate entrepreneurship on the relationships among CEOs’ transformational leadership, technology orientation, and product innovation performance was significantly supported. By studying leadership among CEOs, this study contributes to the research by elucidating the mechanisms through which transformational leadership influences product innovation performance. The mediating role of corporate entrepreneurship encourages managers to improve their leadership style so as to enhance the development of corporate entrepreneurship and innovation practices. The findings also show that technology orientation provides the conditions for the smooth translation of the CEO's transformational leadership into actual entrepreneurial activities. Hence, firms should prioritize technology orientation to optimize the implementation of transformational leadership so as to emphasize innovation and new venture creation.     

Balancing Development Costs and Sales to Optimize the Development Time of Product Line Additions*

Development teams often use mental models to simplify development time decision making because a comprehensive empirical assessment of the trade‐offs across the metrics of development time, development costs, proficiency in market‐entry timing, and new product sales is simply not feasible. Surprisingly, these mental models have not been studied in prior research on the trade‐offs among the aforementioned metrics. These mental models are important to consider, however, because they define reality, specify what team members attend to, and guide their decision making. As such, these models influence how development teams make trade‐offs across the four metrics to try to optimize new product profitability. Teams with such an objective should manage to a development time that minimizes development costs and to a proficient market‐entry timing that maximizes new product sales. Yet many teams use mental models for development time decision making that focus either just on development costs or on proficiency in market‐entry timing. This survey‐based study uses data from 115 completed NPD projects, all product line additions from manufacturers in The Netherlands, to demonstrate that there is a cost to simplifying decision making. Making development time decisions without taking into account the contingency between development time and proficiency in market‐entry timing can be misleading, and using either a sales‐maximization or a cost‐minimization simplified decision‐making model may result in a cost penalty or a sales loss. The results from this study show that the development time that maximizes new product profitability is longer than the time that maximizes new product sales and is shorter than the development time that minimizes development costs. Furthermore, the results reveal that the cost penalty of sales maximization is smaller than the sales loss of development costs minimization. An important implication of the results is that, to determine the optimal development time, teams need to distinguish between cost and sales effects of development time reductions. To determine the relative impact of these effects this study also estimates the elasticities of development costs, new product sales, and new product profitability with regard to development time. Armed with this knowledge, development teams should be better equipped to make trade‐offs among the four metrics of development time, development costs, proficiency in market‐entry timing, and new product sales.     

Empowering leadership in R&D teams: a closer look at its components,process, and outcomes

Empowering leadership in R&D teams has gained increasing popularity as it provides a balance between autonomy and control, encourages member participation and self‐leadership, and benefits creativity and innovation. This research examined the unique influences of two behavior components of empowering leadership: group‐focused empowering leadership and differentiated individual‐focused empowering leadership on R&D team's processes and team effectiveness. Using data from 54 R&D teams, we found that group‐focused empowering leadership is strongly related to intra‐team collaboration, which in turn is positively related to both team innovativeness and performance. Differentiated individual‐focused empowering leadership, however, is positively related to intra‐team competition.     

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.     

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.     

Integration of Finance with Marketing and R&D in New Product Development: The Role of Project Stage

While the interfaces of marketing, research and development (R&D), and manufacturing in product development have been extensively studied, no large‐scale empirical study has focused on finance's role in the product development team. The present research investigates the role of finance in cross‐functional product development teams, thereby extending existing research on cross‐functional integration in product development. A set of hypotheses is tested with a survey of 389 project team leaders and top management team members from companies in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and Austria. The findings suggest that the integration of finance in cross‐functional teams positively impacts project performance and that the importance of the finance interface depends on the project development stage and the innovativeness of the product developed. The results indicate that the R&D–finance interface is most critical at the early stage of a project, while the marketing–finance interface is most important at the late stage, and that the integration between R&D and finance is especially useful in the development of less innovative products.     

Innovating the innovation process: an organisational experiment in global pharma pursuing radical innovation

The challenge of managing the fuzzy front end of the innovation process is particularly acute for large, multi‐brand, research and development (R&D)‐intensive firms. Poor performance at generating radical innovations has resulted in many large organisations seeking to innovate how they organise for innovation. This paper presents an inductive, longitudinal study of an organisational experiment that sought to get ‘game‐changing, radical ideas’ into the new product development funnel of a top three pharma. The immediate outcomes of a team‐based internal innovation tournament included 33 new product ideas, 14 of which were radical. The medium term outcome of the experiment was a reorganisation of how the firm now pursues radical innovation activities. We link these outcomes to team leadership, contrasting innovation processes, including decisions about how to incorporate the ‘voice of the consumer’. The inductive, longitudinal study suggests causal interconnections between innovation team leadership, innovation team processes, and innovation outcomes.     

Good learners: How top management teams affect the success and frequency of acquisitions

We develop new theory and hypotheses on how a firm's top management team learns from acquisition experience, why, in consequence, the composition of the team is crucial, and how this affects acquisition frequency and success. We focus on the diversity of the top team and argue that heterogeneous teams, as compared to homogenous ones, acquire less but benefit more from their acquisition experience and are more successful with their acquisitions because they avoid mis‐transferring their experiences. We tested our hypotheses on acquisition frequency and success using longitudinal data on more than 2,000 acquisitions by 25 Dutch companies over four decades (1966 to 2006). Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Polychronicity in top management teams: The impact on strategic decision processes and performance of new technology ventures

This study focuses on polychronicity as a cultural dimension of top management teams (TMTs). TMT polychronicity is the extent to which team members mutually prefer and tend to engage in multiple tasks simultaneously or intermittently instead of one at a time and believe that this is the best way of doing things. We explore the impact of TMT polychronicity on strategic decision speed and comprehensiveness and, subsequently, its effect on new venture financial performance. Contrary to popular time‐management principles advocating task prioritization and focused sequential execution, we found that TMT polychronicity has a positive effect on firm performance in the context of dynamic unanalyzable environments. This effect is partially mediated by strategic decision speed and comprehensiveness. Our study contributes to research on strategic leadership by focusing on a novel value‐based characteristic of the TMT (polychronicity) and by untangling the decision‐making processes that relate TMT characteristics and firm performance. It also contributes to the attention‐based view of the firm by positioning polychronicity as a new type of attention structure. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Who Knows What in NPD Teams: Communication Context,Mode, and Task Contingencies

The use of cross‐functional teams in new product development (NPD) benefits firms in many ways. One benefit is the diverse knowledge team members bring to the project, but that benefit can only be appreciated if team members fully utilize and integrate the differentiated expertise of members. As reliance on cross‐functional NPD teams grows, however, firms struggle to exploit the full potential of functionally diverse groups, the biggest obstacle being integrating team members' varied knowledge, expertise, and abilities. Therefore, understanding how information is integrated and used is a primary concern for both practitioners and researchers. Databases and other forms of hard data are methods team members can use to effectively share and integrate knowledge; another method based on social cognition is transactive memory systems (TMS). TMS indicates who will learn what and from whom. The notion is that knowledge is distributed among people in the group, and to make effective use of it, individuals need to know who knows what and who knows who knows what. Grounded in the knowledge‐based theory of the firm, this study investigates the influence of different communication contexts and modes on TMS under different NPD task environments (i.e., exploitation and exploration) in cross‐functional NPD teams. A theoretical model is developed and empirically tested using data collected from 272 ongoing NPD teams of 128 Chinese high‐tech companies. Findings suggest that when teams face tasks defined by exploration, informal communication and face‐to‐face communication are positively associated with TMS, whereas for tasks defined by exploitation, formal communication and computer‐mediated communication are positively related with TMS. Additionally, this study found that TMS is positively related to NPD performance both in terms of project performance and in terms of market performance. Based on these findings, theoretical and managerial implications are drawn regarding resource deployment that encourages the development of effective TMS leading to successful NPD projects.     

Procedural Justice Climate in New Product Development Teams: Antecedents and Consequences

With the increasing interest in the concept of justice in the group behavior literature, the procedural justice (PJ) climate attracts many researchers and practitioners from different fields. Nevertheless, the PJ climate is rarely addressed in the new product development (NPD) project team literature. Specifically, the technology and innovation management (TIM) literature provides little about what the PJ climate is, its nature and benefits, and how it works in NPD project teams. Also, few studies investigate the antecedents and consequences of the PJ climate in NPD teams enhancing the understanding of this concept from a practical perspective. This paper discusses the PJ climate theory in a NPD team context and empirically demonstrates how team members' positive collective perceptions of a PJ climate can be developed and how a PJ climate influences a project's performance in NPD teams. In particular, team culture values including employee orientation, customer orientation, systematic management control, innovativeness, and social responsibility were investigated as antecedents, and team learning, speed to market, and market success of new products were studied as outcomes of PJ climate in this paper. By studying 83 NPD project teams it was found on the basis of using partial least squares (PLS) method that (1) the level of employee, customer and innovativeness orientation as well as systematic management control during the project had a positive impact on developing a PJ climate in an NPD team; (2) a PJ climate positively affects team learning and product development time (i.e., speed to market); and (3) team learning and speed to market mediate the relations between the PJ climate and new product success (NPS). Based on the findings, this paper suggests that managers should enhance the PJ climate and team culture in the project team to enhance team learning and to develop products faster. In particular, managers should (1) open a discussion forum among people and create a dialogue for people who disagree with the other project team members rather than dictating or emposing others ideas to them, (2) facilitate information searching and collecting mechanisms to make decisions effectively and to clarify uncertainties, and (3) allow team members to challange project‐related ideas and decisions and modify them with consensus. Also, to enhance the PJ climate during the project, managers should (1) respect and listen to all team members' ideas and try to understand why they are sometimes in opposition, (2) define team members' task boundaries and clarify project norms and project goals, and (3) set knowledge‐questioning values by facilitating team members to try out new ideas and seek out new ways to do things.     

Transformational leadership and gatekeeping leadership: The roles of norm for maintaining consensus and shared leadership in team performance

This study focuses on shared leadership in Japanese R&D teams. The effects of both transformational and gatekeeping leaderships of formal leaders on shared leadership are examined. Moreover, the effect of shared leadership on R&D team performance is examined. Hypotheses are tested with a sample of 654 researchers working in 119 R&D industrial research teams in Japan. Results show that transformational leadership has a negative effect on shared leadership through the norm for maintaining consensus such that it positively influences the norm, which in turn negatively influences shared leadership. In contrast, gatekeeping leadership has a direct as well as an indirect positive impact on shared leadership through the norm for maintaining consensus such that it negatively influences the norm, which in turn negatively influences shared leadership. In addition, this study finds that shared leadership positively influences R&D team performance. These results suggest that leadership displayed by team members and that by formal leaders significantly influences team performance. The results are discussed in the context of the unique Japanese work environment.     

Global customer team design: Dimensions, determinants, and performance outcomes

Designing and implementing global customer teams (GCTs) represents a key task for suppliers that are expanding the scope of their customer relationships. However, research has not provided an explanation of how these teams function and what determines their performance. Using an interdisciplinary combination of concepts from customer management and organizational behavior research streams, we develop an integrative framework of GCT design and performance. The framework is conceptualized with qualitative interview data and validated with survey data from 273 members of 113 GCTs in six multinational companies. Our results indicate that team performance is influenced directly by three team processes: communication and collaboration, conflict management, and proactiveness. Team design in terms of goal and role definition, customer coverage, empowerment, heterogeneity, skills adequacy, and leadership indirectly influences performance, mediated by team processes. In addition, three factors of the organizational environment—top management support, rewards and incentives, and training—have similar indirect effects.