The Lally School of Management & Technology

Marketing Seminar

Rajesh Sethi

Associate Professor, Clarkson University

ABSTRACT:

Studies on new product development teams mostly embrace a rational perspective and overlook the role of political dynamics in influencing the effectiveness of these teams.  These political dynamics are likely to become salient when teams develop new-to-the-firm products.  We draw on research on organizational politics to examine if new-to-the-firm products face resistance during the review and evaluation process.  We focus on two types of product newness: market and technology newness.  In addition, we examine whether teams’ use of four micro-political strategies helps the successful development of new-to-the-firm products.  Specifically, is the effect of newness on resistance mitigated by strategies such as coalition building (i.e., building support for the product) and framing (i.e., presenting the product such that it appears linked to the firms’ existing products, strategies, etc.)?  If resistance persists, does it lead the team to rely on compromise to get approval for the product?  Furthermore, if the team does some secret development of the product (called hiding), does the team have to compromise less in response to resistance?  We also examine whether compromise adversely affects the performance of the product.  Our results based on a survey of 114 product development projects suggest that both market and technology newness enhance resistance to the product.  We also find that coalition building minimizes resistance to products with market newness.  On the other hand, framing minimizes resistance to products with technology newness, but increases resistance to market newness.  Resistance, in turn, leads to increased compromise.  Hiding helps minimize compromise in response to resistance.  Finally, compromise adversely affects the product’s market performance.