DO OPPOSITES ATTRACT IN NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT? INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF INNOVATION-MANAGEMENT CONTROL COOPERATION ACROSS THE NPD PROCESS

Abstract

Cross-functional intra-firm cooperation is crucial for a firm’s new product development (NPD) process and innovation success. Nevertheless, neither current innovation nor management control literature does provide empirical evidence on whether and how the cooperation between innovation and management control departments affects outcomes of the NPD process. Thus, this paper intends to close this research gap by studying the effect of innovation-management control cooperation (IMCC) across multiple NPD process stages on NPD process effectiveness and its consequences for a firm’s innovation and financial success. A multiple-informant data set was collected including 109 dyadic data sets from employees at project and top management level and combined with secondary data assessing financial success. The results show that IMCC exerts a positive effect on NPD process effectiveness. More specifically, the effect can be best described as u-shaped, being strongest in the concept development and implementation stage, but weaker in the product development stage of the NPD process. Furthermore, our findings show that innovation success mediates the relationship between NPD process effectiveness and financial success thereby explaining the contradictory findings of past research concerning the link between NPD and financial success.