Organizational structuring and project team structuring in integrated product development project

Int. J. Production Economics 135 (2012) 939–952

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Int. J. Production Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpe

Organizational structuring and project team structuring in integrated product development project Rupak Rauniar a,n, Greg Rawski b,1 a b

Department of Management, School of Business, University of Houston-Victoria, 3007 North Ben Wilson, Victoria, TX 77901, USA Department of Management, Schroeder Family School of Business, University of Evansville, 1800 Lincoln Ave., Evansville, IN 47722, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

abstract

Article history: Received 17 May 2011 Accepted 10 November 2011 Available online 20 November 2011

For a superior project result, integrated product development (IPD) project need to have stage-specific management approaches where the front-end structuring supports and strengthens the management of the project and the team during the execution stages. In the current study we focus on relationships on the organizational level variable during the front-end stage of the project, organizational structuring, with a project execution level variable, project team structuring to study the impact on product design glitches and project performance in the concurrent project environment. We hypothesize that managing the overall product development projects with integrated organizational structuring at the front stage and project team structuring during the development and project implementation stages can lead to reduced product glitches which can enhance the overall IPD project performance. We test our hypothetical model using data collected from the US automotive industry. Our data supports all the three proposed hypotheses. Discussion and implication of the empirical results, limitations of the current study, and recommendations for future studies are also provided. & 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Organizational structuring Project structuring Cross-functional team Heavyweight manager Product design glitches

1. Introduction Compared to the sequential approach, concurrent engineering has become a popular method to speed up new product development projects and help manufacturing firms seek competitive advantages (Hayes et al., 1988; Meyer, 1993; Patterson, 1993). In such projects various stages and activities are executed simultaneously and are generally facilitated by cross-functional teams (Jayaram and Malhotra, 2010; Koufteros et al., 2010). To find creative and innovative solutions to the engineering design problems in such cross-functional environments, experts from various disciplines work together in concurrent or parallel stages (Olson et al., 1995). Many researchers have theorized such dynamic, and complex, project environments as integrated product development or IPD (Krishnan and Ulrich, 2001; Gerwin and Barrowman, 2002; Rauniar et al., 2008b). The IPD project’s initial stage, also referred to as the front end stage, include activities such as assessments of competition, market, and technology, idea generation, project justification, action plan, etc. which are generally strategic and conceptual in nature (Khurana and Rosenthal, 1998). According to the authors, n

Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 713 436 3677. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (R. Rauniar), [email protected] (G. Rawski). 1 Tel.: þ1 419 270 2300. 0925-5273/$ - see front matter & 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2011.11.009

the front end stage requires organizational level analysis, planning and initiatives. Once the organization validates the new product concept to be congruent with organizational strategic agenda, the project enters into subsequent stages of development and implementation. These stages involve executing concurrent activities of detailed functional and technical design of parts and components, prototype developments, internal and external testing of components, system testing, manufacturing process design and development, etc. (Bingham and Quigley, 1990). Despite its advantages, managing IPD projects is proven to be very challenging (Wheelwright and Clark, 1992), especially for complex products such as automobiles, which involves thousands of engineers and non-engineers of the developmental firm, client, and suppliers who spend years of designing, testing, and integrating hundreds of thousands of parts (Gokpinkar et al., 2010). Several recommendations at the individual level, team level, and organizational levels have been provided in the extant literatures in regard to the effective management and critical drivers of such complex project. For example, Backhouse and Brookes (1996) have suggested that project implementation can be improved through a good fit of the development firm’s process and structure along with management focus, change, and proficiency. Koufteros et al. (2010) stressed the need of systematic and structured integration of the cross-functional team with suppliers and customers for superior project performance. Hart (1995) grouped the determinants of new product development performance into strategic and

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project level variables. Strategic level determinants included organizational culture, organizational strategy, organizational structure, and top management involvement and orientation. Project level determinants included uniqueness of the project, overall product development process, project structure, cooperation between departments, and the involvement of suppliers in new product development process. The meta-analysis of Henard and Szymanski (2001) identified four main groups of antecedents of new product development performance: firm strategy characteristics, firm process characteristics, product characteristics, and marketplace characteristics. Similarly, other important considerations in existing literature include attention to organizational issues (Bailey, 1999), team member selection (Gerwin and Moffat, 1997); individual member’s characteristics (King and Majchrzak, 1996), information sharing and decision making (Rauniar et al., 2008b). Overall, past literatures have separately identified and addressed these critical issues at an individual level, team level, and organizational level, while little research work has been conducted to examine the integrated impact of these various levels on product development project performance, such as glitches in product development. During concurrent detail design and developmental stages of the IPD project, team leaders and members are involved in intensive problem solving and decision making process. These design, development, and tradeoff decisions made across the various stages by different teams and at different point of time needs to be consistent and coherent with the needs of organization, the project purpose and its targeted customers’ needs. However, past studies (Rauniar et al., 2008a, 2008b) have pointed out that maintaining and managing consistent and integrated cross-functional decisions across the project is a daunting task. Conflicting and inconsistent decisions to the engineering design solutions at different concurrent stages of the IPD project can lead to design and development of product plagued with problems, or glitches that can have substantial impact on project performance, such as re-work, scrap, poor resource utilization, cost-overruns, poor quality of design, poor quality of conformance, etc. Importance of quality issues of a product and firm performance has long been recognized in management literatures. Studies in quality management have identified design and conformance quality (Garvin, 1987; Cusumano and Nobeoka, 1992) as critical quality related issues during design and development of a new product. The extent of product design glitches from the knowledge management perspective in IPD projects have been reported by Rauniar et al. (2008b). Similarly the study of Koufteros et al. (2010) on product glitches highlights the importance of supplier and customer integration with the project team. To drive superior project performance, an IPD project, from early on, needs to have a well structured management approach that aligns and promotes the downstream design and development effort with the upstream strategic planning stage. In Borenstein (2008), Associated Press writer Seth Bornestein reported that a nine month delay in project selection process among the two proposals submitted to NASA cost the agency an additional $10 million and 2 year delay for the Mars mission. This report further stated that the conflict of interest created by these project proposals also led NASA to disband its original board formed to pick the project, and had to create a new panel to select the project that would avoid any conflict of interest. Such conflict of interest and alignment issues between organizational objectives and project objectives can tax both the project and organizations in terms of money, time, and customer satisfaction. In their meta-study, Henard and Szymanski’s (2001) points that product development literature has generally directed attention at capturing the effect of project process characteristics, and thereby, ignoring the organizational level variables. Our current

study is directed toward improving IPD project performance by simultaneously addressing management issues of an IPD project at the organizational level during the front end stage and the project team level characteristics at the project’s development and implementation stages. The scope of our current study is conceptually outlined in Fig. 1. There are primarily two objectives of our current paper in the area of IPD projects. First, it integrates the impact of organizational-level management decisions at the front stage of a project to the project level variables of the project execution stages. In the current study we focus on the organizational level variable of front end stage of a project, organizational structuring, with the IPD project execution level variable, project team structuring. We hypothesize that managing IPD projects with organizational structuring and project team structuring can lead to reduced product glitches which, in turn, can enhance the overall IPD project performance in terms of project cost, time, and customer satisfaction. We define organizational structuring of the IPD project to the extent to which the IPD project has strategic alignment and the upfront appointment of the heavyweight product manager to lead the project. Similarly, we define project team structuring of IPD projects to the extent to which the cross-functional teams of IPD projects have a shared project mission, are integrated, and have clarity of key project target tradeoffs. As illustrated in Fig. 1, we focus organizational structuring at the front end stage of the project, while we focus project team structuring issues at the development and implementations stages. The second contribution is that we study the extent of project team structuring on product glitches from the perspective of work integration internal to a project. Product glitches are the design related problems and bugs in the new product development process because of poor team structuring. According to Petersen et al. (2005), the mechanisms that coordinate product designs with manufacturing are inherently complex issues that deserve further study. A past study has identified that knowledge integration of product development teams can minimize product design glitches (Rauniar et al., 2008b). In the current study we analyze the cause and effect of product design glitches from a work integration perspective that involves a cross-functional team led by a heavyweight manager. In studying the IPD project performance, we focus on the negative consequence of product design glitches on overall IPD project performance.

2. Literature review In order to achieve competitive performance, proper fit between an organization’s strategy and structure is essential (Chandler, 1962). This classical theory in strategic management regarding strategy–structure–performance has also been extended in the areas of innovation and development (Teece, 1998) which are tied to long term performance of an organization. Our current study extends this thinking of strategic alignment with structure to explain superior management and performance of an IPD project. We identify two separate structural issues surrounding the IPD project based on the hierarchical distinction between the organizational and IPD project level factors. To develop our theory, we divide the IPD project process into two distinct phases. The first is located upstream, which is the front end stage where organizational level decisions are made in regard to a specific project. The second is the detailed development and implementation stages where, we posit, team and project level factors are more important. 2.1. Organizational structuring at front end stage The initial, front end stage of IPD projects includes all activities from the time the opportunity for a new product idea is identified,

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Organizational Structuring

Heavyweight Product Manager

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Project Team Structuring

IPD Strategic Fit

Shared Mission Clear Project Target Tradeoffs

Front End: idea generation, concept development, product/ project Planning

Cross-functional Integration Development and Implementation Stages

Stage A

Stage B

Stage C

Glitches

IPD Performance Fig. 1. Conceptual framework of organizational structuring and project team structuring in IPD environment.

until the final decision to finance and commit organizational resources to the project is made by the organizational executives (Khurana and Rosenthal, 1998; Kim and Wilemon, 2002; Biyalogorsky et al., 2006). According to Williams and Samset (2010), during the early stage of the project information available to the team is at its lowest while the consequences of decisions for the project are the highest. Similarly, Khurana and Rosenthal (1998) cautions that poor management of the front end stage can have a negative impact on the downstream activities of the project and on the overall organizational performances. Management issues at the front end stage of the project generally include product strategy, goals, project milestones, a powerful project leader, and the initiation of cross-functional team (Jassawalla and Sashittal, 2000). To be effective, the management team needs to have a clear understanding of the business’s strategic intent and the market’s needs, and the relationship between the two. This is the stage where the concept of design-of-quality (Garvin, 1987; Deming, 1986) plays a detrimental role in defining product success. Importance of quality at entry in the developmental project has been emphasized in many studies, as noted by Morris (2009) and Miller and Lessard (2001). Such a quality based approach to serve the targeted customers better and requires a clear understanding of the developmental firm’s capabilities, priorities, and customer’s needs. In any organization, top management is primarily responsible for providing necessary support and resources needed for a project. Shortage of top management engagement and lack of organizational attention at the early stage of the project is tied to poor performance (Sosa et al., 2007). Past studies on the architectural and technical designs in new product development (Henderson and Clark, 1990; Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995) have also supported the theory on the importance of management and

organizational engagement in the early stages of the project. While we recognize the complexity and uncertainty surrounding the early stages of the project, our study posits that management needs to pay attention to two important issues. The first is to establish and ensure the strategic fit of the project. The second is to utilize a heavyweight product manager to provide leadership to the project. These two variables are conceptualized to constitute the importance of organizational structuring for managing the front end stage of IPD project. 2.2. Strategic fit Strategic fit is the extent to which a firm’s overall business, product, and technology guide the product development content and processes (Wheelwright and Clark, 1992). New product strategy has been widely recognized as a vital business priority by high performing businesses (Jayaram and Malhotra, 2010; Koufteros et al., 2010). The new product strategy should clearly establish the strategic need and fit of the IPD project with the overall organizational strategy. Such a strategic view of new product development is consistent with the widely accepted principles of project value management which advocate a shared process to examine the function within the organization-wide context and optimize new design solutions to meet specific project objectives (Neasbey et al., 1999). It is widely accepted that product development projects are risky and entail large capital expenditures by the developmental firm. Thus, there is clearly a need for the management to examine how the definition of the current proposed project fits the business strategy and needs. A strategically important IPD project that is well communicated from the team members from the early stages of the project can provide an umbrella of legitimacy

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and credibility. The project has a better chance of being selected (i.e. it moves faster), accepted (i.e. better team coordination) and executed (i.e. less cost) among the team members (Song and Parry, 1997). Such a strategically aligned project helps the team deal with management hurdles (Van de Ven and Poole, 1995) and resource constraints (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995). Further, Samset (2009) suggests the concept of strategic failure when the project may have been successfully executed, yet the choice of design concept turned out to be the wrong one. Cooke-Davies (2009) looked into the front end alignment of the project and concluded that it is essential to identify explicitly the strategy of the company and ensure that the new product development project contributes to the overall corporate goals. 2.3. Heavyweight product manager According to Wheelwright and Clark (1992), a key dimension to differentiate the different types of lightweight, heavyweight, and autonomous teams is the role of team leader. Compared to the lightweight leader, who functions more as a coordinator than a leader, the heavyweight team leader is directly responsible to senior management for all the work done by the product development team (Wheelwright and Clark, 1992). In their study, Clark and Fujimoto (1990) found that the key to product integrity is leadership from heavyweight managers who focus on devising processes to create powerful product concepts and making sure that the concepts are translated into design and manufacturing process details. They are generally the chief engineers with substantial expertise and have both formal and informal influence in product development projects (Schilling and Hill, 1998). Fujimoto et al. (1996) reported that heavyweight managers help organizations to formulate product concepts and implement them coherently across organizational functions. In general, the importance of leadership in corporate endeavors has been widely studied and researched. The innovation literature emphasizes the importance of a ‘‘promotion’’ leader who is knowledgeable about the organization’s needs and supports the innovation process (Hauschildt and Kirchmann, 2001). Benefits of a heavyweight manger include product innovation (Koufteros and Marcoulides, 2006); internal coordination, product planning, concept development (Zhang and Doll, 2001), customer and supplier integration with the development team (Koufteros et al., 2010) and reduced ambiguity and uncertainty (Koufteros et al., 2005). Such IPD project leaders provide objective advice about emergent questions, interpret needs, balance different points of view, and arbitrate when conflicts of interest arise (Topalian, 2000). They become the guardian of the concept and not only react and respond to the interests of others, but also see that the choices made across the concurrent processes are consistent and in harmony with the basic design concept (Wheelwright and Clark, 1992). 2.4. Project team structuring at development and implementation stages In project-based activities, teams are the prevalent structures that fulfill organizational goals (Edmondson and Nembhard, 2009). Once the organizational level decisions are made to move forward with a particular product concept, the IPD project enters into the subsequent stages of detailed product design, development and implementation where different cross-functional teams start executing concurrent project activities. Theories on team coordination and integration (for example, Thompson, 1967; Van de Ven and Koenig, 1976) argue that cross-functional interaction across distinct temporal phases (planning, development, and manufacturing) requires unique integration mechanisms. The

concurrent project execution requires ongoing problem solving, decision making, and information sharing about partial or complete solutions. As each concurrent stage progresses, cross-functional teams exchange their respective status with others. Based on such coordination, the team updates their assumptions and iterate in parallel until no one sees any further need to change its solutions (Mihm et al., 2010). At each design iteration, re-configuration, or change to the product design (Eisenhardt and Tabrizi, 1995), the development teams face important tradeoff decisions among competing cost, quality, and time considerations that are essential to maintain the internal and external product integrity (Clark and Fujimoto, 1990). According to the Brown and Eisenhardt (1995) and Miller and Hobbs (2009), the structural conditions of the project and team affect the cross-functional team dynamics and project outcomes. A properly structured IPD project process can ensure that proper project process and methods will positively influence team members’ functional behavior and performance via the IPD work environment (Porter and Lilly, 1996). Such a positive work environment and functional behavior seems to be a pre-requisite for any problem solving and decision making activities. A structured IPD project team can help team members to synthesize their diverse thought worlds interactively and iteratively, collaborating and coordinating readily with one another, and coping with organizational barriers (Dougherty and Heller, 1994). Structural mechanisms elevate the team’s information sharing and collaboration and promote cross-functional integration (Slotegraaf and Atuahene-Gima, 2011). Based on these studies and others, we conceptualize IPD project team structuring is the extent to which IPD teams integrate the decisions and activities readily with one another through a shared understanding of the overall IPD project mission and clarity of key target tradeoff decisions. 2.5. Shared project mission Crawford (2002) and Clark and Wheelwright (1992) argue that the project mission is captured in an explicit, measurable project charter and is usually articulated even before the team is selected. Shared project mission refers to the extent of the acceptance of the IPD project mission by the cross-functional team (Rauniar et al., 2008a). A shared sense of organizational identity is emphasized by Ouchi’s (1979) thought on ‘‘clan control’’ in terms of a high degree of shared goals, visions, values, and beliefs. Once the IPD project has been strategically justified, the overall project mission of a specific IPD project needs to be communicated, articulated, and rationalized so that it can provide the IPD crossfunctional team members with an identity and overall direction of the project. This should take place early on at the development stage in order to mitigate the cross-functional team member’s competing social identities and loyalties (Holland et al., 2000). Cross-functional team members should be provided with clear direction for product development programs. Atuahene-Gima (2003) suggest that team members with a shared common goal tend to develop a larger pool of high quality ideas and information by being more open to one another’s diverse perspectives. A shared IPD project mission provides the team with an understanding and appreciation of its fundamental reasons for existing. This can help during resolving conflicting priorities and decisions that are typical in a cross-functional team environment, thereby promoting a sense of community characterized by cooperation and collaboration needed for successful project execution. 2.6. Clear project target tradeoffs The extent of a clear understanding among cross-functional team members about project target specifications in terms of cost,

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quality and time can be referred to as clarity of project targets tradeoffs (Rauniar et al., 2008a). While a shared mission establishes the common road map for the cross-functional team, clarity of IPD targets establishes the stepping stones to fulfill the overall IPD shared mission. Clarity of project target tradeoffs can not only help in identifying the best solution for design problems, but can also help to identify new opportunities (Enright, 2001). Each team needs to ensure that the design and development decisions made at various concurrent stages are consistent with the past decisions made and the future decisions to meet the overall project and customer requirements. Clear understanding of project targets can ensure that no functional goals and objectives take precedence over the overall IPD project’s needs. Clarity of project targets requires unambiguous definition, rich communication, and a common understanding of project targets among team members (Marquardt and Reynolds, 1996). Murmann (1994) argues that having clear targets from the early stage of the project may be critical in improving cycle time (i.e. time to market), team work, and overall process productivity because it enables members to focus resources faster and more effectively. Lack of clear decisions can lead to several problems for the cross functional team, including lack of engagement (Katzenbach, 1998), difficulty in resolving conflicts (Amason, 1996), lack of commitment (Wooldridge and Floyd, 1990), and difficulty in reaching closure in a timely fashion (Harrison, 1996). Larson and LaFasto (1989) found that every effectively functioning team had a clear understanding of its objectives. The research of Gupta et al. (1992) revealed how R&D, marketing, and manufacturing managers in product development projects make tradeoff decisions among clearly specified critical project measures. The relationship between the team members in a concurrent process can become the source of unpredictable behavior as each member may have web of incentives, constraints and connections that impacts project performance (Groak, 1992). Hoegl and Weinkauf (2005) state that given the intense task interdependencies, the success of any one team is dependent on how well its work and design solutions integrates with that of related teams. They need to clarify goals and find mutually acceptable solutions for the design problems (Levitt et al., 1999) because the solutions not only have to meet a set of requirements, but also the interactions between these requirements (De Vries, 1994). 2.7. Cross-functional team integration In our current study, we define cross-functional team integration as the extent to which product development team that is composed of members representing various relevant functional disciplines are collectively engaged in executing concurrent activities of the IPD project. Henke et al. (1993) and Burke et al. (2006) reminds us that the most often cited barriers of an effective product development team is when there is a mismanagement of the internal dynamics of the team. Development, changes, improvements, and new design solutions in such a highly interdependent environment of an IPD project require timely coordination and integration. March and Simon (1958) contend that such collaborative behavior of the team requires very frequent intra-team problem-solving and communication. As cross-functional teams engage in concurrent activities, the issue of conflict resolution and collaboration (Pinto et al., 1993), and communication (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992) behavior of the team can have a tremendous influence on the IPD performance. Project performance should improve when the entire project related tasks and interdependencies among the team members are coordinated. An integrated team facilitates team learning and shared knowledge through joint problem solving and information sharing. In a well integrated team, where information is easily

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exchanged, the team becomes an important source of learning. The team improves identification of expertise (Bunderson, 2003), aides in the transfer of knowledge among the team members (Szulanski, 1996), and helps individuals to successfully apply newly acquired knowledge (Lewis et al., 2005) to solve design and development related problems in the concurrent activities. Further, Jassawalla and Sashittal (2000) suggest that team integration in a new product development project is indicative of general integrative and supportive interpersonal cooperation among team members. 2.8. Product glitches In the concurrent and iterative processes of IPD projects, any changes, redesign, or updates in a concurrent activity needs to be coordinated in a timely manner in order to preserve the overall integrity of the product being developed. Typically, such changes or correction to the parts or components during the developmental stage require an issuance of engineering change order (Gokpinkar et al., 2010). Past studies (for example, Loch and Terwiesch, 1999; Koufteros et al., 2010; Gokpinkar et al., 2010) cite some of the major reasons for engineering change orders which includes: changes related to part designs, individual part or component failure to meet the design specification, or interface problems of parts and components. Product design glitches, or the problems, mistakes, or bugs in the design and development of new products, are problematic because the design fails to meet the requirements for a particular constituent group(s) such as customers, part suppliers, and/or manufacturers. Glitches in a new product development project can be design related (Hoopes, 2001) or production related (Hendricks and Singhal, 2003). Such classifications of product related problems that are popular in quality circles are rooted into the concepts of poor quality of design and conformance. In this study, we focus primarily on the problems stemming from product design related issues as it is the most relevant to our current research topic. A well managed IPD project that minimizes design glitches can provide more benefits to the project and organization than a project that is plagued with design glitches across various concurrent stages of the project. Glitches are costly mistakes or blunders that could be avoided if the parties, including customers and suppliers (Koufteros et al., 2010), involved in a specific process share the knowledge held by other participants (Hoopes and Postrel, 1999; Rauniar et al., 2008b). When solutions are creatively developed by a well integrated project team, there is a lower risk of redesign that otherwise would exceed project cost and time requirements. As Von Hippel (1990) emphasizes, to carry out a design process efficiently there is a need for interactive problem solving by the team members which requires proper team structuring as identified in this study. Lack of interactive problem solving could lead to a project hampered with glitches and errors across concurrent stages of the IPD project. 2.9. IPD project performance In order to assess the impact of our recommendations of organizational structuring, project team structuring and reduced glitches in IPD projects, we define IPD project performance in terms of shortened product development time, reduced product cost, and high customer satisfaction. This is consistent with Griffin’s (1997) widely accepted recommendation of product development performance in terms of schedule, cost, and quality measures. Product cost is the total cost associated with the IPD project to develop and manufacture new products. Product cost includes materials, labor (e.g. fabrication and assembly cost) and overhead (e.g. development

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cost, equipment cost) (Garrison and Noreen, 1997). An effective product development team reduces the costs of material and labor through simplifying the manufacturing processes and reducing the numbers of component parts (Clark and Fujimoto, 1991). Past studies on concurrent engineering have reported the benefits of lowering product costs, achieving improvements in quality (Takeuchi and Nonaka, 1986), and also lowering time to market (Clark and Fujimoto, 1991). Product development time is the time required from product concept to product introduction (Clark and Fujimoto, 1991). Customer satisfaction measures the satisfaction of the customer for a product designed for a certain target market (Cooper and Kleinschmidt, 1987). Target customers of a new product benefit when cross-functional team members avoid possible misunderstandings and exchange resources and critical knowledge in the project freely (Tsai and Ghoshal, 1998).

3. Research framework Organizational structuring through strategic alignment and the presence of a heavyweight product manager at the onset of the project can contribute to better cross-functional team dynamics during the downstream activities through shared project mission, clear project target tradeoffs, and cross-functional team integration in several ways. According to McDonough and Griffin (2000), firms with consistent, high new product development performance established a strategy and made sure to clearly articulate that strategy to team members so that they understood it. Knowing and understanding their firm’s new product strategy as a part of organizational structuring, enables the cross-functional team members to see how their task, roles, and behaviors fit into the organization and how they can contribute to the IPD project success by working with other members. A clearly defined and articulated new product strategy serves as a feed-forward control mechanism (McDonough and Leifer, 1986) during project implementation, which is an essential component to the disciplined problem solving, especially in a concurrent environment. A strategically important IPD project, if clearly articulated and communicated, can provide boundaries for behavior necessary for task and information coordination and decision making. As developmental activities iterate, more insight is gained and the interdependent, concurrent activities need to be re-aligned to reflect any changes. To assess and accept such changes, a team needs to clearly understand the contribution of such changes to the overall project targets and overall organizational and project mission. When there is a common and mutually aligned goal, agreements to the decisions are made more readily (Leenders et al., 2003). Project leaders are primarily responsible for defining team goals and for developing and structuring the team to accomplish missions (Zaccaro et al., 2001). They are the ones who can transform the team’s assigned mission into a workable plan to accomplish several objectives for the team (Hackman and Walton, 1986). In cross-functional teams the leader is often in the unique position of being able to see the whole picture and understand how different sources of expertise fit together (Wheelwright and Clark, 1992). A positive influence of the team manager on team effectiveness and consequently on IPD performance is expected because such individuals effectively facilitate the problem-solving communication from ‘outside’. Leaders instill in team members an understanding of the team’s mission, the action steps necessary to complete the mission and the role requirements for each member for collective performance (Zaccaro et al., 2001). Applying the path-goal theory of Locke and Latham (2002), management can initiate and facilitate a positive cross-functional project

environment by providing the project with a heavyweight product manager and strategic fit of the project at the front end stage. The goals and strategic agenda have to be clearly formulated and communicated to the team members; by doing so, a structure is provided in which the objectives can be achieved (Sarin and McDermott, 2003). Therefore we offer following hypothesis: H1. Organizational structuring through strategic fit and a heavyweight product manager is positively related to IPD project team structuring. Sharp et al. (2000) propose that shared mission, purpose, goals and direction are among the key characteristics of a highperformance team. Providing teams with clear, consistent targets can be ways to create boundaries for the cross-functional team so that the team is not continually defining its direction (Bowen et al., 1994) and wasting valuable project resources. An IPD team with a shared project mission and clear project target tradeoffs would be able to readily identify and establish the new product solutions, concurrent task needs, requirements and interdependencies. Such a shared project mission and clear project targets provides an ‘‘enabling performance situation for task performance strategies that are appropriate to the work, and to the setting in which it is performed’’ (Hackman and Walton, 1986). Recently, Gokpinkar et al. (2010) study on organizational structure and product architecture has developed a coordination deficit metric to quantify the mismatches on product quality. Our current study provides an extension to this study as we tend to focus on the design and development related problem, or glitch, stemming from poor or lack of project team structuring, i.e. poor team integration, lack of shared mission, and unclear project target tradeoff decisions. We argue that, in a poorly structured IPD environment, cross-functional team members will tend to optimize a ‘‘local’’ performance measure, specific to their task and process. But concurrent interdependence of material, work outputs, design, and information requires coordination and communication process among other team members (Mihm et al., 2003). Timely communication of solutions to other interdependent team members enables understandings on the coordination requirements among the concurrent activities. A poorly structured team can be engaged in myopic, selfish behavior and sacrifice too many solution qualities during problem-solving activities as they fail to perceive and take into consideration of each other’s views (Mihm et al., 2003). Failure of cross-functional coordination can lead to frequent, inconsistent, and, at times, even conflicting solutions that can contribute to poor quality of the product. On the other hand, project team structuring through shared project mission, clear project targets, and integrated crossfunctional teams can encourage team members to share problems, create a learning environment within the team (Sarin and McDermott, 2003), engage in functional conflict resolutions (Antonioni, 1996), and work cooperatively toward the common overarching goal (McDonough, 2000). Overall, such team characteristics should encourage and help in collectively addressing and reducing glitches. Therefore, we propose: H2. Project team structuring is negatively related to product design glitches. Design-manufacturing integration has been identified as an important characteristic of successful concurrency as it involves coordination of design with manufacturing (Jayaram and Malhotra, 2010). Hauptman and Hirji (1996) found that overlapping of problem solving pertaining to upstream and downstream decisions was strongly associated with new product

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H1: + Organizational Structuring: -Project Strategic Fit -Heavyweight Product Manager

H2: Project Team Structuring:

H3: Design

-Shared Project Mission

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Glitches

IPD Performance: -Development Time -Development Cost

-Clear Project Target Tradeoffs

-Customer Satisfaction

-Team Integration

Fig. 2. Proposed research model.

development success. In a loosely coordinated IPD team, individual members may not know what other members of the team know or are doing and are likely to rely on partial, incorrect, or untimely information. Such noisy communication among the teams can lead to poor decisions resulting into product with quality related problems. The negative consequences of glitches in overlapped stages are amplified when glitches go undetected to a later stage of the project. In order to fix the glitch, the IPD team may have to revisit various interdependent stages of the IPD process to investigate the cause(s) and effect(s) of a particular glitch for the remedy. These changes, if observed late in the developmental projects, can have ‘‘snowball’’ effects from one component to another, in some cases in cycles, causing long resolution times (Terwiesch and Loch, 1999. Corrective actions to fix glitches can tax a project with delays and additional development costs. Greater variations lead to cost and schedule overruns (Deming, 1986). These corrective actions to fix glitches contribute to rework while successive stages have to wait till such glitches are fixed. From a performance perspective, a glitch translates into re-work, wastage, project delay, and inefficient usage of resources including valuable engineering hours of the IPD projects. If not identified or resolved during the product design and development, glitches can lead to inaccurate forecasting, poor planning, parts shortage, quality problems, capacity shortfall, or operational constraints (Fisher and Raman, 1996). Overall, product glitches have been reported to affect a firm’s short- and long-term profitability (Hendricks and Singhal, 2003). Therefore, we propose: H3. Product glitches are negatively related to IPD project performance. Fig. 2 represents our hypothetical model that identifies the relationships between organizational structuring, project team structuring, product glitches, and IPD project performance.

4. Research methods and results Based on our literature review, the research model proposed in Fig. 2 provides the foundation for the empirical research for this study. An extensive literature review, case studies (Rauniar, 2005; Rauniar et al., 2008a, 2008b) and structured interviews with product development professionals (managers and team-members) from a leading USA based auto manufacturer and academicians helped to define the domain of constructs and facilitated item generation. Items generated for each construct in the proposed research model are presented in Appendix A. As discussed earlier, organizational structuring and project team structuring was conceptualized as a second order construct of project strategic fit, heavyweight product manager(organizational

structuring) and shared project missions, clear project targets, and team integration. (project team structuring). Similarly, IPD project performance is a second order construct of development time, cost, and customer satisfaction. Project strategic fit, heavyweight product manager, shared project mission, clear project targets, cross-functional team integration, design glitch tradeoffs, development time, development cost, and customer satisfaction were coded as SF, HWM, PM, CPT, CFT, DG, PDT, PDC, and CS, respectively, for the data analyses. Three items were identified to measure SF and four to measure HWM. Items for SF were designed to measure whether or not the strategic fit of the IPD project with the overall business strategy guided the project (Rauniar, 2005). The items for the HWM were constructed to measure both the formal influence (for example, control over budget) and informal influence (technical expertise) influence on the team and broader organization context (Rauniar et al., 2008a). Collectively, SF and HWM have been theorized in our current study to measure organizational structuring. Similarly we had four items to measure PM, three for CPT, and five items to measure CFT. Items for PM and CPT were selected to measure whether the two constructs were specified, communicated, and if the team had understanding of these constructs (Rauniar, 2005). Similarly items for CFT included measures to represent cross-functional diversity of the team and concurrency of the project activities (Koufteros et al., 2010). These three factors represented project team structuring. In the current study we focus the extent of project team structuring on two constructs: product design glitches and overall IPD performance. Four items were finalized to measure DG, five for PDT, five for PDC, and four to measure CS. Items for DG represented the extent of design failure to meet the requirements of customers, suppliers, manufacturers, and assemblers. The theoretical basis for developing these items could be found in the study of Hoopes and Postrel (1999). Items for PDT provided aggregate measures of the ‘‘time’’ factor of the project in terms of development time and market introduction time (Rauniar, 2005). Similarly, items for PDC measured the total cost associated with the NPD project to develop and manufacture new products (Rauniar, 2005). Finally, items for CS reflected measures of customer and market satisfaction derived from the new product introduced (Rauniar, 2005). Item descriptions for all the variables are provided in Appendix A. For most items, a five-point Likert scale was used; where 1¼strongly disagree, and 5¼strongly agree. A different scale was used for the general demographic questions. These items were presented to two product development managers, three product development team members, and three academicians for their feedback. Items were added, modified, deleted and finalized on the basis of their qualitative feedback. For our research, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) provided mailing list of

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3000 members that included professionals involved in IPD projects. A survey was administered for the large-scale sample to empirically investigate the proposed research model of Fig. 2. Out of 3000 surveys administered, a total of 220 responses were obtained from the two waves of mail conducted in 2 weeks apart. Out of 220 responses received, 191 were usable resulting in a response rate of 6.3% (191/3000). Such response rate is relatively low and yet not unusual among the busy product development professionals (Rauniar et al., 2008b). Of the total responses received 28% of the respondents worked for companies with up to 499 employees, 8% with companies having 500–999 employees, 24% with companies having 1000– 4999 employees, 12% with companies between 5000 and 9999 employees and 27% with companies having over 10,000 employees. These respondents represented manufacturing firms that developed and produced diverse product categories for the automotive industry. In addition, about 67% represented supplier companies out of which 78% belonged to first-tier suppliers. It is a common practice to include members of supplier and customers in the integrated product development project in automotive industry (Koufteros et al., 2010). Responses to questionnaire in the demographic questions indicated that the respondents had worked on separate IPD projects. Statistical analysis of our large-scale data included tests for reliability, factorial validity, and test for discriminant validity. We then used structural equation modeling to test our measurement and structural model to investigate our hypothesized model of Fig. 2. 4.1. Item purification and exploratory factor analysis For our empirical analyses, we had a total of 37 items representing a total nine variables. With the limited response size of 191, we followed the recommendation of Rauniar et al. (2008b) to conduct two separate factor analyses using principal component analysis and oblimin rotation. In our first factor analysis, we used items representing two variables of organizational structuring (i.e. SF and HWM) and three variables of project team structuring (i.e. PM, CPT, and CFT). Factor analysis of all the variables SF, HWM, PM, CPT, and CFT resulted in five separate factors for each variables under investigation with no cross loadings among the factors. The result of the

first factor analysis is presented in Table A1. All items loadings were 0.61 or above. Overall, the factor analysis demonstrated the factorial validity of our instruments representing organizational structuring and project team structuring. Similarly, the remaining items in our study were subjected to a second factor analysis. The result from this second factorial analysis, Table A2, resulted into four different factors representing DG, CS, PDT, and PDC without any cross loadings. The item loadings ranged from 0.699 to 0.922. Results of the factorial validity are presented in the Table A2. Next, we tested the reliability of each construct using Cronbach’s a. The composite reliabilities of SF, HWM, PM, CPT, CFT, DG, CS, PDT, and PDC were 0.83, 0.82, 0.92, 0.85, 0.82, 0.85, 0.88, 0.93, and 0.89, respectively. All reliability estimates exceeded customary acceptable levels of 0.80 (see Tables A1 and A2 or Table 1). 4.2. Discriminant validity, correlation matrix, and descriptive statistics Discriminant validity is demonstrated when a measure does not correlate very highly with another measure from which it should differ. To assess discriminant validity, the recommendations made by Segars (1997) was followed. According to this method, establishing discriminant validity requires that average variance extracted for each construct should be greater than the squared correlation between constructs. Such results suggest that the items share more common variance with their respective constructs than any variance the construct shares with other constructs (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). Table 1 reports the cross factor reliability, average variance extracted (AVE), correlation, and w2difference between restricted and freely estimated models. As our result shows, all composite factor reliability composite scores were above the 0.70 cutoff, suggesting that the underlying items are sufficiently representative of their respective constructs. Also, all AVE, except work integration (0.48) exceeded the suggested value of 0.50 implying that the variance captured by the construct was significantly greater than that attributable to error. Additionally, AVE measures for all constructs are much larger than the square of the correlation between them; providing evidence of discriminant validity. To further establish discriminant validity, a model which constrained the correlation between the factors was estimated. The w2 difference of the restricted and

Table 1 Composite factor reliability, average variance extracted, correlation, and chi-square difference.

HW SF PM CPT CFT DG CS PDC PDT Mean Standard deviation

HW

SF

PM

CPT

CFT

DG

CS

PDC

PDT

CF reliability ¼ 0.82 AVE¼ 0.53 Correlation¼ 0.40 Chi sq. difference ¼33.0 0.31 62.30 0.36 33.60 0.43 53.80  0.34 37.20 0.38 52.20 0.34 52.10 0.39 27.20 3.37 1.12

0.83 0.63 0.47 65.60 0.49 36.70 0.42 73.70  0.25 147.00 0.53 56.30 0.39 65.00 0.33 45.80 3.86 0.93

0.92 0.74 0.42 67.20 0.52 95.90  0.22 139.00 0.35 107.40 0.33 80.10 0.46 58.10 4.11 0.78

0.85 0.65 0.46 68.60  0.31 154.70 0.32 77.30 0.45 58.10 0.41 38.00 3.65 1.02

0.82 0.48  0.46 222.30 0.49 94.90 0.41 95.40 0.51 58.50 3.72 1.06

0.85 0.58  0.32 167.60  0.38 199.00  0.31 154.00 2.08 0.95

0.88 0.65 0.32 98.70 0.60 45.30 3.73 0.93

0.89 0.63 0.57 41.20 3.57 0.97

0.93 0.73 3.51 1.04

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The results of the structural model data analysis for our hypothetical research model are shown in Fig. 3. The model fit indices for the complete structural model were reported as CMIN/df¼1.582, IFI ¼0.916, CFI¼0.915, and RMSEA ¼0.055. This indicates adequate model-data fit. In Fig. 3, the standardized regression weight for each relationship is reported on the respective arrow. Our data analysis results indicate that all the hypotheses proposed in this research were significant at po0.001, which suggests support for all three hypotheses. The first hypothesis suggested that a positive relationship exists between the second order constructs of organizational structuring and project team structuring in an IPD project environment. The standardized regression estimate of 0.942 was found to be statistically significant at p o0.001 indicating a very strong relationship between these two constructs. The second hypothesis of a negative relationship between the project team structuring and product design glitch was supported by a standardized regression estimate of  0.532, which was also statistically significant at p o0.001 level. Thus, our study suggests that project team structuring can help reducing the occurrences of product design glitches. Similarly, our third hypotheses stated a negative relationship between the product design glitches and overall IPD project performance in terms of development time, cost, and customer satisfaction. The standardized regression of  0.464 was also found to be statistically significant at p o0.001 level indicating a support of our third hypothesis also.

freely estimated models for each comparison resulted in a highly significant difference in w2. This suggested to us that the constructs are distinct and that their underlying scales exhibit the property of discriminant validity. The mean for these constructs ranged from 2.08 (DG) to 4.11(PM) whereas the correlation was found to be in the range of 0.78 (PM) to 1.06 (CFT). 4.3. Structural equation modeling AMOS 5.0 was used to analyze the measurement and structural models. Following Anderson and Gerbing’s (1988) paradigm on model testing, the measurement model was tested first, followed by tests of the structural model. This was done in order to avoid possible interactions between the measurement and structural models. We assess the overall fit of the first order measurement model using all the items related to various first-order construct of project strategic fit, heavyweight product manager, shared project mission, clear project target, team integration, product design glitches, development time, development cost, and customer satisfaction. Using recommendations from Shah and Goldstein’s (2006), Hu and Bentler’s (1999), and Yang et al. (2011), multiple fit indices— the incremental fit index (IFI)¼0.939, comparative fit index (CFI)¼0.938, root mean square approximation (RMSEA)¼0.048, and the chi-square/degrees of freedom¼1.443—are above the acceptable fit and with multiple values indicating good fit. Convergent validity may be assessed by checking the significance of the loading for an item on its posited underlying construct (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988). The loadings for the first order measurement model indicate that all items load significantly on their posted constructs indicating convergent validity. Further, the item loadings are similar between the first and second-order measurement models indicating that the measurement is robust when specifying the second-order construct of project team structuring and IPD performance. The second order construct of organizational structuring contains only two variables, project strategic fit and heavyweight product manager, for which no true statistics tests exists to test the robustness of a second order model. However this relationship is theory driven as discussed earlier in this paper. A correlation of 0.40 between these variables demonstrates that these variables are related and can be used in a second order construct. Once the measurement model was analyzed, we tested the complete structural model. In AMOS, the structural model tests all the path relationships between the constructs simultaneously.

H1: R = +0.942, p***

Organizational Structuring:

5. Discussion Product development projects are notoriously known for complexity and demand integrated solutions which are critical to move projects in a timely manner. In the current study, we proposed that a careful management approach of IPD projects requires stage-specific careful and proper management structuring of the project. Our study breaks the entire development project into two stages, the front-end and development and implementation. All ideas and concepts related to new product during the front end stage can be realized only when the business and management have a methodological, efficient, and effective structured framework at the highest level of organization that promotes task accomplishment at the specific project level. Based on our literature review relevant to this topic, we identify key management decisions at the front end stages as organizational

H2: R = -0.532, p***

Project Team Structuring: -Shared Project Mission

-Project Strategic Fit -Heavyweight Product Manager

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-Clear Project Targets

H3: R = -0.464, p***

IPD Performance: Design Glitches

-Development Time

-Development Cost -Team Integration

Note: R= standardized regression weight, p*** = significant at p<0.001 level

-Customer Satisfaction

CMIN/df = 1.582; IFI = 0.916; CFI = 0.915; RMSEA = 0.055

Fig. 3. Results from structural model. Note: R¼ standardized regression weight, p***¼ significant at p o 0.001 level.

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structuring of the IPD project through proper (a) strategic alignment of the project and (b) upfront appointment of a heavyweight product manager who can provide, through formal and informal influence, the necessary leadership to the cross-functional teams. Such front end organizational structuring helps to shape the context for the IPD project in which the project gets executed. Based on the path-goal theory of leadership (House, 1971), organizational structuring can help a specific IPD project with providing the necessary strategic legitimacy and to build confidence among the project team members because of the appointment of influential project leader who is qualified to direct and manage such a complex project environment. Leadership literatures points out that project manager can provide the team with proper direction and goals, provide motivational support, and help in resolving any interpersonal and organizational issues. Establishing heavyweight leadership at the early stage of the project can help in project planning, determining and defining performance measures, identifying key project responsibilities, and identifying schedules. This ensures that the cross-functional team deployed in IPD project maximizes progress and contributes significantly to overall project performance. However, in an IPD project, several teams may work simultaneously across concurrent activities. This would require leadership to coordinate and synchronize decisions across several concurrent activities and teams. To enhance a leader’s effectiveness, we recommend that such managers should recognize the specific contingency factors of an IPD project that can either be related to characteristics of the team members and/or nature of the concurrent task. Besides leadership, another emphasis on the front end stage, that our current study points out is about establishing and communicating the strategic fit of a particular IPD project. An early recognition and understanding of strategic importance of the project can provide several benefits during the downstream activities. Extending goal-setting theory (Locke and Latham, 2002), a strategically identified, defined, and sponsored IPD project can (i) push the cross-functional team’s attention and effort toward goal-relevant activities; (ii) energize the team members; (iii) influence collective persistence to develop common solutions that is acceptable to every functional constituencies; and (iv) can lead to the cross-functional team’s arousal, discovery, and/or use of task-relevant knowledge and strategies. The empirical part of the study has helped to develop the instruments related to the two factors of organizational structuring and the subsequent data analysis has helped in establishing the validity and reliability of our instruments related to the heavyweight product manager and strategic fit. While past studies have focused on the importance of these two variables separately, our study, by incorporating it in a second-order construct, presents a simpler construct that can serve as an example to the future product development and project management related studies in regard to the importance of such construct. To bridge the gap between front end planning and development and implementation stages, we next direct management’s attention on project team structuring during the project execution stage. In our current study, our first hypothesis points out that the organizational structuring from the front end stage of an IPD project contributes to shaping a functional structure for the IPD team during project execution stages through shared project mission, clear project target tradeoffs and cross-functional team integration. The empirical validity and reliability of our measurements should provide confidence to the future researchers for using these instruments and constructs. For practitioners in the areas of project and team management, our current study point out that effective team performance

depends upon the emergence of accurate shared mental models. A cross-functional team with a shared project mission enables the diverse team members to make decisions and work for a common purpose and project goals. Managers should realize and appreciate that a shared mission can help team members to anticipate each other’s actions and reduce the amount of processing and communication that is required during concurrent execution of activities in an IPD project. A cross-functional team that lacks a common mission can be expected to operate in a fragmented and separated manner and each member tends to identify strongly with its own function. Barriers of communication can exist and, complex problems may not get resolved in a timely and consistent manner. This can adversely impact IPD project performance. Another implication of project team structuring for practitioners is about the importance of clearly articulated and understood project target tradeoffs. With a clear understanding and knowledge of project targets from the early stages of the project, managers can expect that the cross-functional team members will try to avoid possible misunderstandings, reduce conflicts, share project information with others, and reach closure in a timely manner across the concurrent stages. An unambiguous project target will provide opportunities to exchange ideas and resources more freely among the team members leading to superior IPD project performance. For further readings on project targets and tradeoffs in product development projects we recommend reading Rauniar et al. (2008a). The third factor identified for project team structuring is the cross-functional team integration, which has always been an issue important for project managers and researchers. Successful and innovative product development solutions to emerging problems in the concurrent stages are about integrating the new decisions against common project targets. As our study suggests, leading an integrated team can ensure that the highly interdependent and concurrent activities are collaborated in a timely manner. Integrated cross-functional teams adopt functional behavior that can eliminate waste, duplication and unnecessary processes in the project. Managers should allow such teams to be readily involved in joint problem solving activities and facilitate them to find optimal design solutions acceptable to all. Since an IPD project work is highly experimental and dynamic, we feel that it is important that project managers recognize the balancing necessities of two countervailing aspects of IPD projects: the need for standardizing project routines and, at the same time, creating flexibility while handling non-routine activities. To assist, our study collectively points out the importance of strategic fit, shared project mission and clarity of project targets that heavyweight managers should promote using formal and informal influences. Our first hypothesis suggests that there is a positive linkage between organizational structuring and project team structuring. By empirically studying the two structuring mechanisms in the context of a cross-functional team and concurrent engineering, our study links the management issues of these two distinct stages. Our empirical analyses therefore advance the current literature on product development that has conceptually argued on the importance and careful management of the front end stage in the project. A structured project and cross-functional team can ensure the that information from the concept and design engineers to the others are released early and readily, so that the successive concurrent phases of the IPD project can be initiated while final designs are still evolving. Our study can be helpful to the project manager to understand that a well structured team and project can facilitate in creating a functional project context. This context is where a diverse, cross-functional team can acquire crucial information on concurrent activities, exchange views,

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interpret the concurrent task problems, resolve cross-functional conflicts, and reach a mutual understanding for common solutions. Such understanding and cooperative behavior among the project members enables one team member to avoid presenting unsolved problems to the other, that is, to avoid glitches. Our hypothesis empirically validates our claim that reducing such glitches or variation between what was expected or planned versus what is developed, should positively impact project cost, schedule, and customer satisfaction. However we would like to caution the readers on several limitations of our model and overall study. The empirical evidence and the theoretical argument of our paper should not be interpreted as the comprehensiveness of our research model of Fig. 1. Our objective in the current study was to highlight the important structural issues as they relate to the two stages of IPD projects. There could be additional ways and additional factors related to the structuring of the project, such as: rewards, project process, communication technologies, etc. On the basis of our literature review on the topic, we also recommend that project managers and business leaders recognize the organizational specific contextual differences that could be included in defining specific organizational structuring and project team structuring. Additionally, we recognize the danger of selective retention to the research variables to suit our hypotheses and consider that more extensive studies will be required to identify critical management factors during the front end and the execution stages of the IPD project. The study directs its attention to problem solving and the decision making aspect of team work. As an emerging model, it lacks the richness of multi-level models that have been developed in other team and leadership related studies (for example, see Amabile, 1996 or Woodman et al., 1993). Further adding to the limitations, our data represents the USA automotive industry, where the practice of using a heavyweight product manager is common. As such, our empirical results may be restrictive to the context of the US automotive industry only

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and may lack generalizability of our research findings. Future study can enhance the current study to reflect other industry specific variables relevant to the structuring of an IPD project.

6. Conclusion In this article, we have conceptualized overall IPD management in terms of organizational structuring at the front end stage, and project team structuring at the project development and implementation stages. In spite of vast literatures in both leadership and project cross-functional teams, there are few conceptual frameworks and empirical studies in the area of product development that distinctively identifies critical management issues and techniques related to specific stages of the project. Accordingly, we have identified and empirically studied strategic fit and the heavyweight product manager as important aspect of organizational structuring driving the front end stage that can lead to superior project performance during project implementation. Similarly, we define important management issues during the project development and implementation stages to include shared project mission, clear project targets, and cross-functional team integration. Such project team structuring seems to have an impact on the project glitches which in turn leads to superior project performance. Failure to manage strategically important IPD projects can limit the competitive growth of a business. As more and more product development projects are being implemented using the approaches of IPD, management issues specific to IPD projects needs to be studied and modeled in future studies.

Appendix A See Tables A1 and A2 for more details.

Table A1 Item description, factor loadings of first factor analysis (factor analysis I), and Cronbach’s alpha. Item code Factor 1 HWM1 HWM2 HWM3 HWM4 Factor 2 SF1 SF2 SF3 Factor 3 PM1 PM2 PM3 PM4 Factor 4 CPT1 CPT2 CPT3 Factor 5 CFT1 CFT2 CFT3 CFT4 CFT5

Description

Heavyweight manager Heavyweight manager Heavyweight manager Heavyweight manager Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.82

Factor loadings

were given real authority over personnel had enough influence to make things happen had a final say in product design decisions had broad influence across the organization

0.816 0.795 0.742 0.776

Our firm’s overall technology strategy guided a setting of project targets Project targets were consistent with our overall business strategy Our firm’s overall product strategy guided a setting of project targets Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.83

0.851 0.693 0.86

The project mission was well communicated to all team members The project mission was well defined for all team members The product development team had a well defined mission The project mission was well understood by the entire team Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.92

0.893 0.752 0.862 0.941

The project target clearly specified tradeoffs between performance and cost The project target clearly specified tradeoffs between time and cost The project target clearly specified tradeoffs between quality and cost Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.85

0.839 0.796 0.877

Product development team members represented a variety of disciplines Various disciplines were involved in product development from early stages The team consisted of cross-functional members of the organization The team simultaneously planned the product, process, and manufacturing activities of the project All necessary functions of the organization were represented in the project team Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.82

0.814 0.72 0.612 0.719 0.683

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Table A2 Item description, factor loadings of second factor analysis (factor analysis II), and Cronbach’s alpha. Item code Factor 1 DG1 DG2 DG3 DG4 Factor 2 CS1 CS2 CS3 CS4 Factor 3 PDT1 PDT2 PDT3 PDT4 PDT5 Factor 4 PDC1 PDC2 PDC3 PDC4 PDC5

Description

The product design did The product design did The product design did The product design did Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.85

Factor loadings

not not not not

meet meet meet meet

customer requirement(s) supplier requirement(s) manufacturing requirement(s) assembly requirement(s)

0.773 0.853 0.854 0.808

The new product fit target customers better The new product has more loyal customers The new product generated more new customers The new product was more successful in the marketplace Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.88

0.699 0.917 0.871 0.808

The team enabled our company to start volume production faster The team brought the product to the market before our competitors The team developed the product from concept to commercial production faster The team made better progress in reducing total product development time The team helped to launch the new product in the market faster Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.93

0.909 0.907 0.790

The team reduced product costs successfully The team reduced material costs successfully The team successfully reduced assembly cost The team reduced equipment cost successfully The team reduced manufacturing cost successfully Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.89

0.794 0.892 0.813 0.779 0.922

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