A Research On The Factors Influencing The Efficiency Of R&D Project Teams In A Multi-culture Environment

In the 21^st century, due to the more competitive market environment, modern enterprises now pay more attention to the exertion of team spirit and the building of collective sense, so as to respond to the market demand quickly, and work more efficiently. Project team is an important type of team, and it is more and more important because more companies turn to project-oriented operation today due to the reduction of the new product development circle time. And more and more companies are handling problems in a multi-culture environment. Among the literatures on project team, performance is the heated topic discussed by many people, because good performance is critical for teams to survive, only by obtaining effectiveness can teams be successful.This thesis aims at figuring out the factors influencing the performance of new product development project teams in a multi-culture environment. Firstly, I deeply immersed in the literatures in related fields, as a result, we summarize three categories of factors affecting team performance according to previous scholars' research and the face to face interview with some project team members: (1) factors about innovation; (2) factors relate to the tasks; (3) factors relate to the environment in which teams operate. These include 10 specific factors. Then we make up a conceptual model of factors influencing the performance of new product development project teams in a multi-culture environment. Then, we continued our research by questionnaires from dozens of companies.The paper reached following conclusions: (1) In new product development project teams, the organization environment, team role balance, team conflict, team atmosphere of innovation, team task objective definition has significant effect on team performance. (2) The range of the culture in a project team has significant effect on the team atmosphere of innovation and team performance. (3) The type of team leader behavior has no significant effect on team efficiency. Then, I give some suggestions on the build of a multi-culture new product development project team.