The effects of team reflexivity and innovativeness on new product development performance
| Published date | 25 April 2008 |
| Pages | 548-569 |
| Date | 25 April 2008 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02635570810868380 |
| Author | Les Tien‐Shang Lee |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
The effects of team reflexivity
and innovativeness on new
product development
performance
Les Tien-Shang Lee
Department of International Trade, Graduate College of Management,
Kun Shan University, Tainan, Taiwan
Abstract
Purpose – To determine the effects of project management skills, entrepreneurial proclivity, and
existing knowledge on team reflexivity and performance of cross-functional new product development
(NPD) team. The moderating roles of team cohesiveness and knowledge practice are also explored.
Design/methodology/approach – This study used online questionnaire surveys by inviting 500
R&D team members of NPD from three Science Parks in Taiwan. The survey questionnaires were sent
to the representative of R&D team members.
Findings – The results indicate that members’ project management skills,entrepreneurial proclivity,
and existing knowledge have significant impact on team reflexivity and product innovativeness of the
NPD project, which then influence NPD performance. Furthermore, NPD team exercising higher levels
of team cohesiveness and higher knowledge practice tend to moderate the influence of team reflexivity
and product innovativeness on NPD performance.
Research limitations/implications – The use of longitudinal research is suggested to confirm the
results of this study. Moreover, other research settings, either different industry or other countries,
could increase the generalizability of the findings.
Practical implications – The study has high implications for managers of NPD to recruit qualified
team members who have adequate knowledge and strong entrepreneurial proclivity. Moreover,
managers should be aware of the moderating role of team cohesiveness and knowledge practices.
Originality/value – The paper determines the antecedents and consequences of team reflexivity and
innovativeness among NPD team members. The moderating role of team cohesiveness and knowledge
practices are discussed.
Keywords Project management,Skills, Team working, Product management
Paper type Research paper
1. Research background
New product success has been an important issue in new product development (NPD)
research. A recent study conducted by Ozer and Chen (2006) found that, the success
rate of NPD in Hong Kong is very low, with 100 ideas only lead to 2.15 successful new
products. In order to enhance the success rate, most of companies heavily rely on
cross-functional NPD teams which consisting of members from R&D, marketing,
manufacturing, and sales. Cross-functional new product teams are assumed to
facilitate the collaboration of product development and marketing process by solving
an information-processing problem (Lovelace et al., 2001). However, team functional
diversity does not always have positive effects on performance (Simons et al., 1999).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-5577.htm
IMDS
108,4
548
Received 13 June 2007
Revised 23 October 2007
Accepted 8 November 2007
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 108 No. 4, 2008
pp. 548-569
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/02635570810868380
Dougherty and Hardy (1996) argued that diversified background of NPD team
members resulted broader perspectives on important product attributes as well as
strategies to generate innovative products. When teams were unable to reconcile their
different perspectives, the NPD teams as well as the products itself would be
unsuccessful. Additionally, the higher rate of failure in NPD remains high if the
company fail to learn from their past successes and mistakes (Sarin and McDermott,
2003). According to Lovelace et al. (2001), the degree of unsuccessful team tends to be
high when there are not task agreements on team outcomes; and it depends on the
liberty of each member to express the doubts of related task and how collaboratively
these doubts were expressed.
Some scholars proposed that knowledge integration under uncertainty condition is
the key success of NPD (Danneels, 2002). Through effective integration of technological
and marketing knowledge, the probability of new products to be success tends to be
high (Clark and Fujimoto, 1991). Each team member should employ information
exchange as their reflection, by giving more attention, awareness, monitoring, and
evaluation the new product which developed. Hoegl and Parboteeah (2006) further
proposed that project management skills are some of the determinants of team
reflexivity. Project management skills are necessary fro flexible planning and ongoing
controlling of the task process, which is of particular important in the case of
innovative projects, given their high degree of task-related uncertainty and complex ity.
Existing knowledge will be the second determinants of team reflexivity, which is
similar to organizational memory proposed by Moorman and Miner (1997). The ability
of team members to be reflexive will depend on the knowledge that each member has.
Moreover, in the adaptation dimensions of reflexivity, entrepreneurial proclivity will
play the main role by engaging the team to be risk-taking and more proactive in order
to meet customers’ needs as well as creating competitive advantage (Griffith et al.,
2006).
Another pivotal role of the success of new product development is product
innovativeness. It refers to product advantage which customer-perceived superiority
as to quality, benefit, and functionality and product uniqueness/superiority
(Montoya-Weiss and Calantone, 1994). The innovativeness of the product also can
lead to the formation of new business unit(s), the extension of other product lines or the
introduction of improvements into other product lines. This study adopted that,
the degree of product innovativeness will be influenced by entrepreneurial proclivity of
the NPD team. The project management skills and existing knowledge also become the
determinants of innovativeness when the planning and controlling skills necessary
during the development of new product (Brockman and Morgan, 2006; Jordan and
Segelod, 2006).
Most of studies which emphasized the role of NPD team focused on the
cross-functional NPD teams which behave as community. The community-behave
team categorized by Lindkvist (2005) as knowledge community which practicing their
knowledge as a “tightly knit” “affect-laden” social structure amounting to “dense”
relationships of mutuality. Typically these kinds of groups consist of diversely skilled
individuals, who have to solve a problem or carry out a pre-specified task within
tightly set limits as to time and costs. As a result they tend to become less
well-developed groups, operating on a minimal basis of shared knowledge and
understandings, and Lindkvist (2005 ) categorized as “knowledge collectivit y.”
Effects of team
reflexivity and
innovativeness
549
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