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High-technology firms often institute cross-functional teams to manage product innovation initiatives. The assumption is that (a) creative and successful products from new technologies must reflect the integration of multiple talents, therefore the innovation process will require integration among people who possess them, and (b) when people with multiple talents are placed in teams, they will interact, cross-fertilize ideas, and collaborate to produce creative new products from new technologies faster and cheaper than those produced by alternative structural arrangements. While teams are easy to institute, fostering high levels of collaboration among participants has proved harder in practice. While some teams achieve high levels of collaboration, others merely replicate rivalries that exist in the organization and breed cynicism.

Based on our study of product innovation processes in high-technology industrial manufacturers, this chapter discusses the differences between high- and low-collaboration teams. Specifically, we report the key (a) developmental milestones in the process by which groups of people from diverse functional areas become high-collaboration teams and create new products faster and cheaper, and (b) factors associated with participants, team leaders, senior management, and the organizational culture that seem to shape the emergence of collaboration in teams.

Present research on Concurrent Engineering (CE) mainly focusses on technological aspects like information sharing, and common communication platforms, or coordination systems such as CE-Tools like CAD, CAM, DFA or QFD. In the European context, the implementation of Concurrent Engineering certainly involves changes of organizational management and people. traditional way of work. For the success of Concurrent Engineering, organizational, managerial and human issues are very important.

This chapter presents the results of a current research project that is being carried out at the Chair and Institute of Industrial Engineering and Ergonomics of the University of Technology in Aachen, Germany. It shows the results of a study about cross functional teams in a Concurrent Engineering environment. Based on a multi-dimensional model of self directed work organization for teams in Concurrent Engineering, preconditions were generated to design and develop learning organizations which use Concurrent Engineering. Based on this team model for a learning organization in CE, requirements for soft skill qualification for team members were developed.

In the core of the Concurrent Engineering Team research, there are three levels: individual issues, team issues and organizational issues. Individual issues focus on the differences among team members that may influence the cooperation in the team (different specialization, different work departments, different values, different socializations etc.). The team level issue focusses on the internal management of a CE team (goal system, distribution of tasks, sharing of team rules, interaction style, interpersonal relations, team leadership etc.). Finally, the organizational level can be regarded as a team-external support environment for team management (management, commitment and involvement, empowerment of the team leader etc.). The individual and organizational levels influence the team level factors.

But cross functional organization effectiveness in a Concurrent Engineering environment is more than the design of teams. The implementation of Concurrent Engineering must change the whole organization. An effective organization can be based on eight principles of the Learning Organization, as pointed out by Senge or Probst. The objective for the design of this organization is to be self-organized.

To reach these principles in a CE team environment, the involved team members must be qualified to be prepared for new work in a crossfunctional organization. A soft skill qualification system for Concurrent Engineering will be presented at the end of the research project. Contents of this qualification model include communication in teams, techniques of group discussion and project management.

This study aims to explore the influence of environmental education on perceived eco-innovativeness and behavioral intention in the context of farm tourism that embraces the concept of sustainability. It conducts a series of on-site surveys in a farm which supplies a variety of recreational activities along with environmental educational programs. The survey lasted for two-and-a-half months and resulted in 620 useful responses. To achieve the study aim/purpose/objective a theoretical model entailing environmental education, perceived innovativeness and behavioral intention is first constructed. Then structural equation modeling is performed. The study found that environmental education has both direct and indirect impacts on revisit intention and environmental education strongly influences guests’ perception of eco-innovativeness. However, perceived eco-innovativeness does not affect the revisit intentions. Implications and suggestions for future study are provided as concluding remarks.

A growing body of literature exists on virtual (i.e., geographically dispersed) teams; however, few summaries of this knowledge are available. The purpose of this paper is to help fill this gap by reviewing empirical research that addresses the effectiveness of virtual versus traditional (i.e., co-located) teams. Based on the typical input-process-output model of team effectiveness, we classify almost 200 empirical studies on virtual teams according to key dimensions of the model, including tasks and group characteristics, contextual factors, and supervisory behaviors. We develop propositions to address neglected research areas regarding the differences between virtual and traditional teams. There is still much to learn about virtual teams and how the physical dispersion of team members affects team effectiveness. It is our hope that our review and propositions will guide future research efforts and will help human resource professionals realize the potential for distributed teams in their organizations.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

This chapter extracts a broad range of learning situations in connection with product innovation. The data comprise interviews with the management and employees in five Danish manufacturing firms visited during 2000–2001. Among important learning situations and factors promoting learning have been found the firms’ contacts with customers, project leaders’ cross functional coordinating activities, and cooperation with suppliers and knowledge institutions. The restraints upon learning comprise inter alia strategic patterns, tight time planning, old routines and communication difficulties, changing of roles, ad hoc decisions on training and education and some times among employees lack of motivation. Some policy perspectives are outlined.

The essential investments in new product development (NPD) made by industrial companies entail effective management of NPD activities. In this context, performance measurement is one of the means that can be employed in the pursuit of effectiveness.

This paper deals with the organizing of interactive product development. Developing products in interaction between firms may provide benefits in terms of specialization, increased innovation, and possibilities to perform development activities in parallel. However, the differentiation of product development among a number of firms also implies that various dependencies need to be dealt with across firm boundaries. How dependencies may be dealt with across firms is related to how product development is organized. The purpose of the paper is to explore dependencies and how interactive product development may be organized with regard to these dependencies.

The analytical framework is based on the industrial network approach, and deals with the development of products in terms of adaptation and combination of heterogeneous resources. There are dependencies between resources, that is, they are embedded, implying that no resource can be developed in isolation. The characteristics of and dependencies related to four main categories of resources (products, production facilities, business units and business relationships) provide a basis for analyzing the organizing of interactive product development.

Three in-depth case studies are used to explore the organizing of interactive product development with regard to dependencies. The first two cases are based on the development of the electrical system and the seats for Volvo’s large car platform (P2), performed in interaction with Delphi and Lear respectively. The third case is based on the interaction between Scania and Dayco/DFC Tech for the development of various pipes and hoses for a new truck model.

The analysis is focused on what different dependencies the firms considered and dealt with, and how product development was organized with regard to these dependencies. It is concluded that there is a complex and dynamic pattern of dependencies that reaches far beyond the developed product as well as beyond individual business units. To deal with these dependencies, development may be organized in teams where several business units are represented. This enables interaction between different business units’ resource collections, which is important for resource adaptation as well as for innovation. The delimiting and relating functions of the team boundary are elaborated upon and it is argued that also teams may be regarded as actors. It is also concluded that a modular product structure may entail a modular organization with regard to the teams, though, interaction between business units and teams is needed. A strong connection between the technical structure and the organizational structure is identified and it is concluded that policies regarding the technical structure (e.g. concerning “carry-over”) cannot be separated from the management of the organizational structure (e.g. the supplier structure). The organizing of product development is in itself a complex and dynamic task that needs to be subject to interaction between business units.

The paper provides an overview of research published in the innovation and operations management (IOM) literature on 15 methods for cost management in new product development, and it provides a comparison to an earlier review of the management accounting (MA) literature (Wouters & Morales, 2014).

This structured literature search covers papers published in 23 journals in IOM in the period 1990–2014.

The search yielded a sample of 208 unique papers with 275 results (one paper could refer to multiple cost management methods). The top 3 methods are modular design, component commonality, and product platforms, with 115 results (42%) together. In the MA literature, these three methods accounted for 29%, but target costing was the most researched cost management method by far (26%). Simulation is the most frequently used research method in the IOM literature, whereas this was averagely used in the MA literature; qualitative studies were the most frequently used research method in the MA literature, whereas this was averagely used in the IOM literature. We found a lot of papers presenting practical approaches or decision models as a further development of a particular cost management method, which is a clear difference from the MA literature.

This review focused on the same cost management methods, and future research could also consider other cost management methods which are likely to be more important in the IOM literature compared to the MA literature. Future research could also investigate innovative cost management practices in more detail through longitudinal case studies.

This review of research on methods for cost management published outside the MA literature provides an overview for MA researchers. It highlights key differences between both literatures in their research of the same cost management methods.

Ask leaders what their organizations need more of to thrive, and many will identify collaboration. Yet many collaborative efforts fail. A focus on the inner workings of teams, to the exclusion of the ecosystem in which teams work, has masked the importance of a collaborative context. We undertook a single case study of an exemplar firm with the intent of offering a nuanced illustration of the collaborative workplace. We illustrate how three contextual factors related to work, relationships, and behaviors shift the setting from a place where collaboration is hard to do, to one that embodies collaboration as a widespread competence.