THE IMPACT OF CROSS-FUNCTIONAL JOINT INVOLVEMENT ACROSS PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT STAGES - AN EXPLORATORY-STUDY

Cross-functional integration offers numerous, well-documented benefits for new-product development (NPD), but it also can carry significant costs. Joint involvement of R&D, manufacturing and marketing personnel can increase the quality, the manufacturability, and the marketabilit y of the final product. However, building consensus among these groups , with their differing perspectives and goals, may require time-consum ing meetings as well as tremendous finesse from the managers who guide the NPD effort. Those managers require an approach to cross-functiona l integration that strikes a balance between efficiency and effectiven ess. X. Michael Song, R. Jeffrey Thieme, and Jinhong Xie propose that the right mix of cross-functional involvement may differ depending on the stage in the NPD process. They also suggest that blindly promoting the involvement of all functional areas in all stages of the NPD proc ess may actually decrease NPD performance. They test these proposition s in a study that examines the relationships between new product perfo rmance and cross-functional joint involvement between R&D, manufacturi ng, and marketing in five major stages of the NPD process: market oppo rtunity analysis, planning, development, pretesting, and launch. Their objective in this study is to identify patterns of effective cross fu nctional involvement in different NPD stages. The study uses data coll ected from 236 managers working in the R&D, manufacturing, and marketi ng departments of 16 Fortune 500 firms. Their findings suggest that ne w-product success may be more likely when a firm employs function-spec ific and stage-specific patterns of cross-functional integration than it is when the firm attempts to integrate all functions during all NPD stages. For example, during the market opportunity analysis stage, th e findings suggest that joint involvement between R&D and marketing ma y be productive, but joint involvement between R&D and manufacturing a nd among all three functions may be counterproductive. The results als o indicate that joint involvement among all three functions either doe s not have a significant effect on new product success or may be count erproductive in all stages of the NPD process. For the firms in this s tudy, the three functions seem to fake turns playing the central role in cross-functional activities. During the product planning, developme nt, and resting phases, the role of the focal function, or communicati on hub, shifts from manufacturing to R&D and then to marketing. (C) 19 98 Elsevier Science Inc.