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Systematic research examining the mechanisms that mediate the dynamic capability–performance relationship remains scarce. So too is research on the conditions under which these mechanisms might be influential. Accordingly, this study aims to build upon business network research to examine how a firm’s dynamic network capability (DNC) impacts firm performance, mediated by the speed of product reconfiguration (i.e. new product development [NPD] speed) and bounded by firm age.

The authors conduct moderated mediation analysis on survey data from small- and medium-sized manufacturing and technology firms in the USA. This study uses an initial survey and then a follow-up survey.

The findings support the general view that DNC is instrumental to firm performance, regardless of firm age. However, DNC operates differently for younger vs older firms. That is, DNC’s impact on the performance of younger firms is enabled by speeding up NPD, while much of the performance impact for older firms appears to be through alternative resource reconfiguration route(s). This study identifies the need to include a mediating variable such as resource reconfiguration to detect how DNC impacts performance.

The model could include different dimensions of mediating resource reconfigurations, alternative boundary conditions and longer-term data.

This study provides managers with insight on how speed of product reconfiguration (in terms of NPD) operates in the DNC–performance relationship. It also helps them understand how this relationship changes in younger vs older firms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to provide empirical evidence on how DNC operates to influence performance in firms that are younger vs older.

The speed of new product development (NPD) has been a key factor in a firm's degree of competitiveness. The tools and philosophy of quality management have been widely used to improve and control product quality. However, there is a lack of literature on the relationship between quality management and NPD. This paper aims to report on a study that investigates the influence of quality management on the speed of NPD.

The philosophy of quality management refers to total quality management (TQM). Tools for quality management include teamwork, continuous improvement (CI), value analysis (VA) and quality function deployment (QFD). This study begins by comparing literature in concurrent engineering (CE) and TQM, which leads to several common principles and five hypotheses. The hypotheses are tested using survey data from 700 manufacturing companies in 20 countries.

The research reveals that TQM, Team, VA and QFD are positively correlated with the speed of NPD, meaning that the tools and philosophy of quality management have a positive influence on the speed of NPD. However, no relationship is found between CI and the speed of NPD.

This paper tests hypotheses using survey data. It reveals the empirical relationship between quality management and the speed of NPD but does not provide details regarding the mechanism of influence between the two. Consequently, case studies should be conducted in the future to probe into the details. Additionally, new quality methods like Six Sigma can also be included in a future study, since Six Sigma covers both quality and NPD.

This study proposes that companies that have implemented TQM and other quality management tools will have a better foundation for implementing new NPD approaches like CE and design for manufacturing and assembly. This is especially encouraging for those original engineering manufacturing (OEM) firms that would like to change from OEM to original design manufacturing/original brand manufacturing (ODM/OBM). OEM companies typically implement TQM but invest very little in NPD.

This paper fills the gap in research exploring the links between quality management and NPD. It addresses the concern over whether quality management may hinder NPD. The critical issues for implementing quality management such as culture change, learning, change management, and team building can all be applied to implementing NPD methods such as CE. The result also supports the concept of “design the quality into products”. It is beneficial for employees in quality and NPD to share and work together.

This paper aims to investigate how top management service commitment (TSC) affects two dimensions of new product development (NPD), speed and product innovativeness, and to examine how dysfunctional competition moderates the effects in emerging economies.

Data were collected from 151 high-tech manufacturing firms in China. In one firm, two different top managers were surveyed to reduce the common method variance. The authors used the seemingly unrelated regression approach to test the hypotheses.

First, TSC negatively influences product innovativeness, an effect that dysfunctional competition attenuates. Second, despite not being significantly positive as hypothesized, the direct effect of TSC on NPD speed remains positive when dysfunctional competition is high rather than low. Third, the findings reveal that product innovativeness increases firm performance, but NPD speed shows no similar effect.

First, top managers should pay attention to the synergistic effect between industrial services and product businesses. Second, manufacturing firms in developing countries need to implement servitization when facing unlawful competitive behaviors.

In literature, the effect of industrial services on NPD is unclear. The present study enriches literature by connecting servitization with NPD and by focusing on the importance of top managers to the implementation of servitization. In addition, the authors extend the servitization literature to emerging economies and thereby provide significant insights into this context.

From the dynamic capability perspective, the aim of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework for collaborative capability, including scanning, relational skills and adaptation and to test the impact of each dimension on the acquisition of technological and marketing knowledge from partners. The conceptual framework also suggests that these two types of knowledge acquisition have different impacts on new product development (NPD) creativity and speed.

This study builds a theoretical framework and tests it with survey data from 289 Chinese manufacturing firms.

Firms with strong collaborative capability are identified to gain better knowledge acquisition from their partners and achieve higher NPD performance. While acquired technological knowledge has a greater effect on NPD creativity than acquired marketing knowledge, the latter has a greater effect on NPD speed. In addition, these two types of knowledge acquisition form different mediating paths between collaborative capability and NPD performance.

This study not only underlines the important role of collaborative capability in facilitating knowledge acquisition, which in turn improves NPD performance, but also suggests that decision-makers should note the different roles of technological knowledge and market knowledge in influencing NPD performance.

These findings enrich the understanding of how firms enhance NPD performance by developing collaborative capability in a major emerging economy (i.e. China). In addition to demonstrating the differential effects of heterogeneous knowledge acquisition on NPD performance, different pathways of mediation through knowledge acquisition are also identified in the relationship between collaborative capability and NPD outcomes.

The objective of this paper is to extend the study of new product development speed in the marketing discipline. The article outlines a conceptual framework to organize and guide future theoretical and empirical research. A set of propositions is developed which focus on the antecedents and outcomes of new product development speed germane to the discipline of marketing. The article discusses how both infrastructural factors (bureaucratic structure and adhocratic culture) and procedural factors (organizational control and interfunctional coordination) affect new product development speed. It also discusses the impact of new product development speed on performance factors internal to the organization (organizational learning and organizational stress). Research contributions and research directions are addressed.

This article aims to examine the impact of leadership styles on new product development (NPD) and how product innovativeness of NPD projects moderates this impact. The results reveal the implications of different product innovativeness for leaders of NPD projects in achieving successful outcomes.

Data were collected through a questionnaire survey of NPD team members who were involved in NPD. Participants were employees from different departments, including research and development (R&D), quality control (QC), production and marketing. These individuals worked in innovative manufacturing industries such as automotive and auto parts and electronics.

Results show that transformational leadership has a significantly positive effect on new product success and NPD speed, whereas transactional leadership has a significantly negative effect on both outcomes. Furthermore, the positive impact of transformational leadership on new product success for high innovativeness is stronger than for low innovativeness. In addition, the negative impact of transactional leadership on both new product success and speed for high innovativeness is stronger than for low innovativeness.

First, the sample size was fairly small because of limited access to middle-level management and low willingness to share information involving the firms' production. Second, since both transformational and transactional leaderships are multidimensional, each dimension may affect performance in different ways. Third, the respondents were mainly from a single department which could omit varying perspectives.

The research findings provide recommendations on how different leadership styles support team members to effectively perform NPD tasks in either high or low innovativeness.

This study extends the theory of leadership by providing a holistic understanding of how leadership styles affect NPD performance. It also extends the understanding of how the impact of two different leadership styles on NPD performance is moderated by product innovativeness.

From the dedication–constraint perspective, this study aims to complement ongoing discussions on the effects of switching costs on performance and explain the role of customer involvement and relationship quality in the relationship between switching costs and performance.

After collecting data from Chinese manufacturing firms, the authors employed structural equation modeling to test their theoretical model incorporating switching costs, new product development performance, relationship quality and customer involvement.

The findings show that switching costs negatively affect three dimensions of new product development performance covering new product development market performance, new product development speed, new product development cost. More importantly, relationship quality positively moderates the relationship between switching costs and new product development performance, while customer involvement takes positive moderation effects.

These conclusions contribute to the knowledge of switching costs and supplier–customer relationship, and provide theoretical contributions and managerial insights for both academics and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of three types of supply chain involvement (SCI) on three types of new product development (NPD) performance.

To test the research hypotheses, structural equation modeling was conducted using data from 214 Chinese manufacturing companies.

The results reveal that internal involvement is positively associated with customer and supplier involvement. It was also found that three types of SCI influence three types of NPD performance differently. Specifically, internal involvement is important in improving NPD speed, while customer and supplier involvement have significant effects on NPD cost and NPD speed. Moreover, internal and customer involvement enhance market performance indirectly, whereas supplier involvement improves market performance both directly and indirectly.

This research examines the relationship between SCI and NPD performance in China. However, the effectiveness of SCI may be contingent on various factors (such as involvement timing, innovation strategy and business environment) and the relationship may be different in other cultural contexts.

Managers should adopt a holistic SCI perspective to manage their supply chains when developing new products, to achieve better performance.

This study contributes to SCI literature and practices by defining three types of SCI in the context of supply chain, examining the relationships among them and revealing the impacts of different types of SCI on different types of NPD performance.

Firms spend considerable amount of money on information technology (IT) to improve their processes, thereby reducing costs, enhancing quality and getting to market faster. Consequently, understanding the effective relationship between the IT department and new product development (NPD) teams can inform whether firms reap the expected benefits from their IT. The purpose of this paper is to provide an initial observation that helps in recognizing the unique relationship between the IT department and NPD teams.

Mail surveys resulted in 21 dyads (IT department head and NPD team leader) from manufacturing firms in 14 different industries. These data are analyzed by correlations, Wilcoxon's paired signed‐rank tests and crosstabs.

The results demonstrate that IT department and NPD team leaders share similar understanding regarding the role of IT in NPD. Moreover, the results provide evidence that more IT is better for NPD flexibility, but it also increases product development costs.

Future research would investigate why increased IT results in amplified costs. Among the potential reasons discussed in this paper is the assimilation of IT, that is, the degree of success achieved by a firm in making use of the capabilities of IT.

It is useful for practitioners to know that IT department and NPD team leaders share similar understanding regarding the role of IT in NPD because shared understanding enhances innovativeness. Managers should also be cautious about relying too much on IT for coordinating NPD activities and must find a balance between the two.

This paper examines the alignment of perceptions of the IT department and NPD teams while also revealing the effect of IT on several NPD outcomes.

Firms build new product development alliances to cope with the demands of continuous and rapid new product development. Such alliances allow surplus access to complementary capabilities and knowledge. However, the successful use of specialization advantages requires coordination and effective communication between alliance partners. Communication is vital to alliance success, as it allows a timely flow of information and resources across partners and supports the coordination within the alliance. The aim of this study is to research how divergent communication schemes influence firms’ new product development performance in alliances.

A paper-and-pencil survey about firms’ collaborative new product development performance in the German medical device industry was conducted. Results are derived from a survey of n = 184 new product development alliances in the medical device industry. To test the hypotheses, structural equation modeling (SEM) using the Mplus 7.0 software was applied.

The empirical results indicate that divergent communication schemes enhance product innovativeness and speed to market in new product development alliances. The development of new insights and solutions through joint sensemaking builds the theoretical fundament for the supportive effects of divergent communication schemes. Divergent communication schemes go hand in hand with ambiguity, that is, the source of joint dialogues and discussion through which alliance partners refine and adapt their different perspectives and interpretations. However, the supportive effect of divergent communication schemes on speed to market declines with increasing collaboration intensity.

The assessment of divergent communication schemes and new product development performance of the dyadic relationships in this survey is only based on one respondent. Furthermore, the study’s focus on a specific industry sector, albeit one fitting particularly well to the research question, may further limit the generalizability of the empirical findings. Future research should thus strive to take both firms of the dyadic relationship into account and moreover attempt to investigate mediating effects such as joint sensemaking or creativity.

The results indicate that alliance managers should become aware that different ways of communication are not per se dysfunctional. To achieve beneficial effects, they should enhance dialogues and constructive discussions through which the alliance partners develop novel insights and solutions on the fundament of occurring misunderstandings that root in divergent communication schemes. Regular meetings and conferences as well as inter-organizational teams should be applied because they stimulate joint dialogues and discussions in alliances. These instruments also enable learning processes and the development of trust that are both crucial for sensemaking processes in alliances.

Prior research has stressed the importance of interorganizational communication for the success of alliances. However, little is known about the effect of divergent communication schemes in alliances. This study shows theoretically and empirically that divergent communication schemes can improve new product development performance in alliances. The supportive effect of divergent communication schemes is contrary to the argumentation that communication problems and misinterpretations hamper alliance success.