Investigating the effects of time pressure on new product development teams

CHONG SAU FOONG DARREL

Publication

Investigating the effects of time pressure on new product development teams

CHONG SAU FOONG DARREL

Abstract

The need for innovation has led high-technology organizations to use project teams as the method of choice to bring new products to market under demanding schedules. Adopting a team approach, however, is not always fruitful and often depends on whether team members can work effectively together. Several studies have identified stress to potentially enhance or threaten team effectiveness. Among the different kinds of stress, time pressure has emerged as a prominent and ubiquitous stress experienced by innovation teams. Although much research was conducted on time pressure, most of them had focused on individual processes. Therefore, we decided to study time pressure in a team environment, with a specific focus on new product development (NPD) teams. This thesis consists of four empirical studies. The first study is exploratory. It examined the antecedents of and coping resources in relation to time pressure. The subsequent two studies investigated the effects of time pressure on team outcomes, with team communication being the key team process in the second study and a two-dimensional model (challenge-hindrance time pressure) developed in the third study to provide an added perspective on how time pressure influence critical team outcomes, such as coordination, quality, and timeliness. The fourth study, which evolved from the earlier investigations, tested the moderating effects of time pressure on the relationship between team proximity and team communication. All the studies were conducted using NPD teams from Western Europe (Belgium, France, Germany, The Netherlands, and United Kingdom), involving respondents from various hierarchies (developers, leaders, managers) of project teams in Philips, NXP, Oce, FEI, Medtronics, and Infineon, to name a few. The first two studies were qualitative, and adopted a multiple case study (interview) method, using a sample of 8 teams. The subsequent studies were quantitative, and adopted an electronic survey method, using a sample of 81 teams (500 respondents). <br>this thesis contributes to knowledge in relation to understanding the antecedents and coping resources of time pressure, the effects of time pressure on key team outcomes, and its role as a moderator, all in the context of NPD teams. The conceptualization of time pressure as challenge and hindrance time pressure is new and needs to be further validated in future research. The detailed implications with respect to theory and practice as well as limitations of our research are discussed in the main chapters of the thesis.