Research On The Relationship Among Team Characteristics, Duality Leaning And New Product Development Performance

Although there are lots of existing literatures in the area of new productdevelopment (NPD), and the academicians still try their best to explore and clarify thefactors that impact the success of NPD, these researches are far from to meet the practicalneeds, and the high failure rate of NPD is always the difficulty that is never resolved.Therefore, the management of NPD is still the hot topic of academicians andPractitioners. Owning to the change of environment, the factors that affect NPD successwill also change. The new competitive environment is characterized by economicglobalization, rapid technology advancement, product lift cycle shortening, high marketturbulence and complexity. Current environment puts forward new requirements to NPD,that is, NPD should be improve product quality and functions, decrease cost, reduce timeto market, and bring added value to customers and other stakeholders. Only quicklylearning can meet such requirements, and it is necessary to engage in duality learning, inothers words, the NPD team must engage in exploration and exploitation learningsimultaneously. Exploitation learning means learning on the basis of current area andwithin the current organizational framework, while exploration learning means learningand acquiring advanced knowledge and technology outside the boundaries oforganizations. The former can produce more certain and immediate performance, whilethe later can help firm to establish competitive advantage and long growth potential. Thebalance of exploration and exploitation learning can take into account both immediateinterests and long-term growth.The cross-functional team is the core implementation entity of NPD, and most firmshighly depend cross-functional teams to develop new products. In some cases,cross-functional team can succeed, but in most cases, they fail because being used ormanaged improperly. Only those cross-functional team with specific characteristics canenhance duality learning, thus, the team composition and team process are needed to bemanaged and controlled properly, which in turn will activate effective learning. Therefore,according to the principle of controllable and manageable, this paper defines thedimensions of team characteristics, and analyzes their effects on duality learning.In order to finish the NPD tasks smoothly, effectively and efficiently, the mutualefforts of leaders and team members are necessary. Transformational leadership is mosteffective leadership, which can overcome the conflicts and contradicts between teams members resulted from the physical, emotional, cultural and moral difference.Transformational leader can mobilize the initiative and creativity of team membersmaximum through ideal influence, motivation inspire, intellectual activation andindividual concern. Transformational leader act as effective leaders, organizers andactivators, and they both emphasize individual creativity, and cooperation.Based on the sequential interdependence among them, this paper takestransformational leadership, team characteristics, duality learning and NPD performanceas main variables, and establishes theory models using them. Then the paper deeplyanalyzes three aspects theoretically and empirically, including the impacts of dualitylearning on NPD performance, team characteristics on duality learning, andtransformational leadership on team characteristics.The body can be divided into seven parts:First part is introduction. This part states the theoretical logic among variables, thetheoretical and practical significance, the research framework and main content, studypath and methods.Second part is systemic literature review and appraise. This part introduces therelative theory base, including organizational learning theory, human capital theory,leadership theory, leader—member exchange theory, social exchange theory andknowledge management theory. Then the paper gets441literatures about NPD from thedatabase of ABI Proquest, and sums up the factors that effect NPD success. The domesticliteratures are also reviewed. Based on the literature review and appraise, the researchquestion is pointed out.Third part is theory framework establishment. The main content of this part isdefining the concepts and dimensions of variables, and establish theory model. Scientificdefining the concepts and dimensions of variables is the premise and basis of analyzingthe relationship between them. In this paper, we divide learning into exploration andexploitation learning, divide team characteristics into seven dimensions, includingentrepreneurial orientation, learning orientation, existing knowledge, social skills,reflexivity, trust and procedural justice. Transformational leader is composed by idealinfluence, motivation inspire, intellectual activation and individual concern.The fourth part is theory and hypotheses. Based on theory inducing, this partanalyzes the impacts of duality learning on NPD performance, team characteristics onduality learning, and transformational leadership on team characteristics, and points out the relative hypotheses.The fifth part is methodology. This part includes data collection, samplecharacteristics description, measures development, and hypotheses examination.The sixth part is empirical results and discussion. Combing theory analysis, the partdiscusses the results, and puts forward the theory contribution and practical implications.The final part is conclusion and future direction. The part sums up the whole paper,obtain the main results, and points out the innovative points and directions that are worthto be researched further.In general, we obtain three meaningful conclusions: firstly, it is important for firmrealize the balance and complementary between exploration and exploitation learning;secondly, the firm should enhance duality learning through the effective management andcontrolling on team composition and working process. Thirdly, the firm should improveits transformational leadership and enhance the management and control of teamcomposition and working process using transformational leadership.