National Culture and Npd Workgroup Dynamics: a Cross Cultural Study between Singapore and New Zealand

The use of cross-functional new product development workgroups, has been widely acknowledged as aiding successful new product development. There are a number of barriers and sources of conflict that can arise within the workgroup however. These could be contingent on the national culture of group members. Using a two stage research design, NPD teams in New Zealand and Singapore were measured on Hofstede’s national culture dimensions, with their proposed impacts on the managerial styles and workplace dynamics investigated using a case study approach. The dimensions of power distance, individualism and uncertainty avoidance have been identified as having explanatory power. Introduction The last three decades has seen numerous new product development (NPD) success and failure studies identifying management factors that enhance NPD performance (e.g. Cooper and Kleinschmidt, 1987). Consistently amongst these NPD management factors are achieving good functional integration, particularly between the marketing and technical functions, and upper management involvement and commitment to NPD. Although many managerial tools are recommended for successful NPD, e.g. the use of cross functional teams (see Griffin and Hauser 1996), most of these recommendations are derived from NPD research undertaken in western cultures, particularly North America and Europe (e.g. Cooper and Klenschmidt 1995). There has been little examination of national culture’s impact on effective NPD. Although national culture has often been used to explain differences and similarities in cross-national research, comprehensive measurement of the individual NPD team member’s national cultural values are scarce (e.g. Hegarty and Hoffman, 1993, Kleinschmidt, 1994). In this era of business internationalisation, this lack of measurement of national culture values of the NPD players may prove to be a limitation when applying recommendations from research that has been undertaken in a national cultural environment different from the one in which it is to be applied (Holzmüller and Stöllnberger, 1994). There are examples of NPD management and other NPD tools which have failed due to lack of national cultural fit (e.g. Griffin, 1992; Nakata and Sivakumar, 1996). Although there are many arguments for and against the measurement of national culture, many researchers have postulated that national culture explains between 30 to 50% of a person’s behaviour (Gannon, 1994 p.6). Purpose of the Study This paper examines and contrasts the processes and dynamics of NPD decision making used by NPD players involved in NPD projects, in two different national cultural contexts, New Zealand (NZ) and Singapore. The core question being addressed is to determine if there are national cultural variations in the way that NPD project groups operate, with particular reference to 1. The roles of each of the players within the NPD process, senior management, technical and marketing; 2. The motivations of each of the individual’s roles for proficient NPD, 3. The NPD reward structures including the components that characterise functional integration, focusing on the integration mechanisms used, information flow and levels of trust and conflict within the group; and finally, 4. The accountability aspects of proficient NPD workgroup decision and process dynamics. These are all proposed to have an impact on the way in which the management of functional groups are undertaken. Conceptual and Proposition Development National culture is only one of the contextual elements on which to examine country differences (e.g. Moenaert et al. 1994), and on which to measure the practices within the firm. The model of national culture chosen for this research is the five Hofstede (1980, 1991) dimensions of national culture. Although there has been considerable debate on the relevance and accuracy of these Hofstede dimensions, the underlying national culture dimension structure has been repeatedly replicated and validated (see Sondergaard 1994), and has become one of the most used models of national culture for managerial research (e.g. Hennart and Larimo 1998). The five Hofstede dimensions are (Hofstede, 1980; 1991): Power Distance (the degree of inequality amongst people within a society); Individualism/Collectivism (the degree that people act as individuals or as group members); Masculinity/Femininity (the degree to which masculine and feminine values prevail); Uncertainty Avoidance (the degree to which people are tolerant and avoid unstructured situations); and finally Longterm orientation (the degree to which people are oriented towards the future). The use of Hofstede dimensions allows more directional explanations of the differences and similarities of different NPD managerial practices allowing practices to be adapted and adopted beyond the national culture from which they are developed. Numerous NPD success factors have been identified in the literature and listed in meta studies (e.g. Montoya-Weiss and Calantone 1994, Griffin and Hauser, 1996) The factors include: the organisational structure, dependent on the people involved in the process and the form the process takes; the roles of upper management and the other functions within the process; the integration of the key functional units (which includes the communication and cooperation between the functions); and the ability of the organisation to foster flexibility into the process. The organisation culture environment of the firm and the national culture within which the firm operates have also been identified contingent factors for successful NPD activities (Kleinschmidt, 1994; Nakata and Sivakumar 1996). The use of NPD workgroups has been widely acknowledged as a major contributor to NPD performance (see Griffin and Hauser 1996). The movement from NPD being undertaken in traditional functional structures to cross-functional structures such as NPD workgroups recognises that through the NPD’s life a combination of skills, knowledge and expertise from different functional levels is required (see Griffin and Hauser 1996). Cross-functional NPD workgroups encourage communication, cooperation and provide to some extent formalisation and help resolve conflict (Griffin and Hauser, 1996). Most research has focused on the role of management, R&D and marketing in these workgroups, there is, however, a growing body of literature that recognises the importance of manufacturing (Griffin and Hauser 1996). In NPD workgroups, however, a number of barriers exist and there is a propensity for disharmony between the technical (particularly R&D) and marketing functions (Souder 1988) with some researchers suggesting that it is the norm rather than the exception (Moenaert and Souder 1990). The Griffin and Hauser (1996) review summarised these sources of conflict and barriers to integration as differences in R&D and marketing: personalities; cultural thought worlds; language; organisational responsibilities (including reward systems); and environmental factors such as physical barriers. When these barriers exist they are significantly linked to limiting NPD performance (see Griffin and Hauser 1996). The focus of this research is to determine if there are national cultural impacts on NPD workgroup processes and dynamics, which will require managerial acknowledgement for effective NPD. The following model (figure 1) has been designed to illustrate the interaction of the components understudy for this study. Fig. 1. Guiding Model The model (figure 1) makes the assumption that the environment within which NPD is undertaken will influence: the types of managerial behaviour, roles of each of the functions, the interaction between functional units, reward structures, and the accountability of the NPD group. The environment has been further defined as the cultural conditioning of the players within NPD (national culture and the socio-economic context of the nation). Organisational culture has also been indicated as being an important component influencing NPD. This paper has limited itself to examining the nature of the NPD decision and process dynamics and the impacts of national culture on these. Integrating the NPD and national culture literature, the proposed relationships are: In individualistic cultures there will be greater empowerment to project leaders to foster ideas through the process; greater empowerment of team members; explicit communication styles; motivation through variety and challenge; more of an economic orientation; have a task orientation; and have less propensity to work in teams. Culture Conditioning