The Dark Side of Team Social Cohesion in NPD Team Boundary Spanning

Abstract

Although team boundary spanning is conducive to achieving new product (NP) competitive advantage, these actions may not always deliver the expected performance. The current study makes an initial attempt to examine factors that undermine team boundary spanning positive effects on NP competitive advantage by proposing and testing a negative moderating effect of team social cohesion on the relationship between team boundary spanning and NP competitive advantage. Furthermore, the current study expects team social cohesion to have a stronger negative moderating effect on the relationship between team boundary spanning and NP competitive advantage when external task interdependence and project newness are high than when they are low. Data for this study come from 140 NPD projects developed and commercialized by Spanish manufacturing firms in high‐ and medium‐high‐technology sectors. The study’s results reveal a positive effect of team boundary spanning on NP competitive advantage. Furthermore, high levels of team social cohesion are shown to reduce the positive effect of team boundary spanning on NP competitive advantage. Finally, we found that project newness and external task interdependence accentuate the negative moderating effect of team social cohesion on the relationship between team boundary spanning and NP competitive advantage. The current study makes several contributions to the literature. First, findings from this study give us new insights into the significance of team boundary spanning to the success of NPs by revealing that boundary‐spanning activities are beneficial to achieving NP competitive advantage. Second, the study departs from existing research in that it exposes a dark side of team social cohesion for NPD teams engaged in boundary spanning activities. Last, the study expands extant research by proposing and demonstrating that project newness and external task interdependence bring about situations in which external groups present a threat to the collective identity of socially cohesive groups.

Continuity, Change, and New Product Performance: The Role of Stream Concentration*

“…A second decision is related to the composition of NPD teams. They are often assembled within a constrained set of candidates and must combine individual member characteristics with interpersonal dynamics for the success of their endeavor (Brockman et al, 2010; Carbonell and Rodríguez Escudero, 2019). Research on constructs such as group longevity (Katz, 1982), team internal density (Reagans, Zuckerman, and McEvily, 2004), team familiarity (Huckman, Staats, and Upton, 2009), and team experience (Reagans, Argote, and Brooks, 2005) shows that team stability increases efficiency, but at the price of resistance to change and ingroup dynamics.…”

“…A set of studies focuses on the costs of team change, emphasizing the efforts required to integrate new and existing team members (Solinger, van Olffen, Roe, and Hofmans, 2013) and align team members’ skills (Taylor and Greve, 2006) as well as inefficient transactive memory systems (Lewis, Lange, and Gillis, 2005). A robust finding is that stable teams perform better than newly assembled ones (Huckman et al, 2009; Reagans et al, 2004) because shared working experience makes knowledge combination more straightforward (Argote and Miron‐Spektor, 2011; Brockman et al, 2010; Carbonell and Rodríguez Escudero, 2019). Familiarity among members influences how effectively NPD teams coordinate in two ways.…”

“…These experiences contribute to define not only individual expertise and the opportunity for team members to span organizational boundaries (Carbonell and Rodríguez Escudero, 2019; Carley, 1992), but also individual identities and expectations about what is deemed to be appropriate or not for a given knowledge domain, such as a specific organization’s identity (Ravasi et al, 2019). In other words, NPD projects are shaped by distinct knowledge structures: individual and organizational knowledge (Argote, 2013; Dane, 2010; Song and Montoya‐Weiss, 2003; Yayavaram and Ahuja, 2008).…”

“…Hence, product development teams are challenged to manage trade‐offs between something old and something new. They may opt for continuity, re‐using tried and tested product attributes, or for change, introducing new ones, eliminating others, or designing completely different new products (Carbonell and Rodríguez Escudero, 2019; Eggers, 2012; Eling et al, 2016; Heath, Chatterjee, Basuroy, Hennig‐Thurau, and Kocher, 2015; Spanjol, Xiao, and Welzenbach, 2018).…”

“…In particular, team change (vs. stability) is a long‐studied practice to balance the competence requirements of NPD projects. A common finding is that team stability improves efficiency, but hampers creativity and generates resistance to out‐group ideas (Carbonell and Rodríguez Escudero, 2019; Katz, 1982). In contrast, team change offers opportunities to produce more innovative outcomes at the price of reduced efficiency (Brockman, Rawlston, Jones, and Halstead, 2010; Guimera, 2005).…”