THE ROLE OF CREATIVITY, STABILITY, ANTICIPATE REGRET IN NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: HOW CRITICAL IS STABILITY IN CROSS-FUNCTIONAL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TEAMS?
Authors:
Sethi, Anju1 sethia@clarkson.edu
Sethi, Rajesh1
Source:
AMA Summer Educators' Conference Proceedings; 2011, Vol. 22, p576-577, 2p
Document Type:
Article
Subject Terms:
*NEW products
*MANUFACTURING processes
*TEAMS in the workplace
*PRODUCT management
*DIRECT marketing
NAICS/Industry Codes :
541860 Direct Mail Advertising
333994 Industrial Process Furnace and Oven Manufacturing
334513 Instruments and Related Products Manufacturing for Measuring, Displaying, and Controlling Industrial Process Variables
Abstract:
Although researchers have studied how a variety of team factors can lead to the development of superior and successful products, one team structural factor continues to present a challenge. That factor is team stability -- which refers to the extent to which members of a cross-functional team remain the same from start to finish of a product development project. In the academic literature, a mixed picture emerges about the need for team stability and its influence on team outcomes. Then, there is this emerging argument that until a decade ago, teams used to be fairly stable, but stability is now a thing of the past. Today teams are kept flexible and fluid in the business world. The new reality is that team members will come and go. In other words, even if team stability is considered to be good, the modern organizational reality doesn't permit the luxury of stability. Given this changing organizational reality, it becomes important to ask: Is cross-functional team stability really critical for the development of superior products (i.e., innovative and quality products)? Alternatively, if creating a high level of stability is less tenable, is there a way to structure teams that will still ensure the development of superior and successful new products? We address these questions. Importantly, the studies on team stability haven't really taken into account the cross-functional nature of product development teams. The functional identities that members of a cross-functional team hold give rise to inter functional biases and stereotypes that make it difficult for members of cross-functional teams to constructively work together. As a result, the team's effectiveness in developing superior and successful products is adversely affected. Unless the adverse effect of functional identities can be mitigated, it is likely to be difficult to develop superior and successful products. In this research, we invoke the social identity perspective, which suggests that creating a team-based super-ordinate identity is essential for overcoming the adverse effect of functional identities. Super-ordinate identity refers to the extent to which members identify with the team (rather than merely with their functional areas) and perceive a stake in the success of the team. Thus, from the perspective of this study, the important questions are: (1) how critical is stability in creating super-ordinate identity and thereby leading to the development of superior and successful products, and (2) considering the new organizational reality of flexible teams, can some other factors help develop super-ordinate identity and thus, make stability less critical? A key requirement for the development of super- ordinate identity in a cross-functional team is strong outcome interdependence in the team. Outcome interdependence is defined as the degree to which team members' responsibility, accountability, evaluation, and rewards are linked to the project rather than to their respective functional tasks. However, if outcome interdependence is such a key factor, does it make stability a less important driver of super-ordinate identity? Thus, we also examine the effect of outcome interdependence and how it moderates the effect of team