Who Knows What inNPDTeams: Communication Context, Mode, and Task Contingencies

Abstract

The use of cross‐functional teams in new product development (NPD) benefits firms in many ways. One benefit is the diverse knowledge team members bring to the project, but that benefit can only be appreciated if team members fully utilize and integrate the differentiated expertise of members. As reliance on cross‐functional NPD teams grows, however, firms struggle to exploit the full potential of functionally diverse groups, the biggest obstacle being integrating team members' varied knowledge, expertise, and abilities. Therefore, understanding how information is integrated and used is a primary concern for both practitioners and researchers. Databases and other forms of hard data are methods team members can use to effectively share and integrate knowledge; another method based on social cognition is transactive memory systems (TMS). TMS indicates who will learn what and from whom. The notion is that knowledge is distributed among people in the group, and to make effective use of it, individuals need to know who knows what and who knows who knows what. Grounded in the knowledge‐based theory of the firm, this study investigates the influence of different communication contexts and modes on TMS under different NPD task environments (i.e., exploitation and exploration) in cross‐functional NPD teams. A theoretical model is developed and empirically tested using data collected from 272 ongoing NPD teams of 128 Chinese high‐tech companies. Findings suggest that when teams face tasks defined by exploration, informal communication and face‐to‐face communication are positively associated with TMS, whereas for tasks defined by exploitation, formal communication and computer‐mediated communication are positively related with TMS. Additionally, this study found that TMS is positively related to NPD performance both in terms of project performance and in terms of market performance. Based on these findings, theoretical and managerial implications are drawn regarding resource deployment that encourages the development of effective TMS leading to successful NPD projects.

Communication in Theory and Research on Transactive Memory Systems: A Literature Review

“…Scholars have also examined the influence of communication contexts and modes on TMS. In new product development teams, task exploration and task exploitation moderated the positive association between four communication types (i.e., informal-, formal-, face-to-face-, and computer-mediated communication) and TMS (Tang, Mu, & Thomas, 2014). Tang et al defined task exploration as searching for and experimenting to find new knowledge, and task exploitation as capitalizing on existing knowledge.…”

Team Diversity in Innovation––Salient Research in the Journal of Product Innovation Management

“…As a result, Salomo et al () see global innovation teams, which are highly diverse in the geographic location of their members, as representing an important antecedent to global innovation success. Complementing these results, Tang et al () found that developing a transactive memory system (TMS) in teams consisting of members from diverse geographic locations facilitates the team’s innovation performance. In this respect, Tang et al () stress the importance of communication within these teams and point to the key role of selecting the appropriate communication context and mode in which to develop TMS.…”

“…This is also a surface‐level attribute of job‐unrelated diversity. Both the selected studies in this domain use cross‐sectional field surveys to investigate this type of team diversity with one basing on a key respondent design (Salomo et al, ) and the other on a multi‐informant design ( Tang et al, ). The selected studies on diversity in geographic location use the resource‐based view of the firm (Salomo et al, ) and the knowledge‐based view of the firm (Tang et al, ) as their theoretical foundations.…”

“…The two studies focus on ways to manage this type of diversity to minimize detrimental effects potentially arising due to geographically diverse locations (Salomo et al, ; Tang et al, ). Hence, the two studies do not aim at specifying the direct effects of this type of diversity on team collaboration and performance.…”

Can the Balance of Management Control Improve Performance?

“…These organizational performance measures have been frequently used in previous literature (Tang et al, 2015).…”