Structural and contextual correlates of charged behavior in product development teams
研究了跨职能产品开发团队中“充满活力行为”对新产品市场绩效的影响，并分析了团队结构特征和情境因素如何影响这种行为，发现结果相互依赖、客户输入、竞争程度和部门间联系能促进充满活力行为，而物理邻近性、团队寿命、风险鼓励和质量导向则无显著作用。
Firms increasingly use cross‐functional teams to develop new products, yet we know little about the processes that make teams excel. Although studies have focused on within‐team processes like cooperation between and integration of individuals from various functional areas, some emerging literature suggests that the processes that make teams excel are richer and more complex than cooperation and integration. In order to capture the processes that lead to excellent market performance of new products, we introduce the concept of charged team behavior, the extent to which cross‐functional product development teams are enthusiastically and jointly driven to develop superior new products. Charged team behavior captures not only the drive, commitment, and joy of team members, but also their collaborative behaviors to achieve an exceptional outcome. We propose and test a series of hypotheses concerning how charged behavior affects new product market performance and how charged behavior is, in turn, influenced by both team structural characteristics (physical proximity, team longevity, and outcome interdependence) and contextual factors (senior management encouragement to take risk, quality orientation, exposure to customer input, extent of competition, and interdepartmental connectedness). It is particularly important to examine the antecedents of charged behavior because there are concerns that some of the team‐related factors generally considered to be useful for teams may not necessarily lead to charged teams. Data from new consumer product development teams is analyzed though structural equation modeling for hypothesis testing. We find evidence that highly charged teams are more likely to develop successful new products. Results also indicate that outcome interdependence, exposure to customer input, extent of competition, and interdepartmental connectedness are positively related to charged behavior. Physical proximity, team longevity, encouragement to take risk, and quality orientation do not improve teams' charged behavior. Data suggests that charged team behavior: 1) fully mediates the effects of outcome interdependence and interdepartmental connectedness on performance, 2) partially mediates the influence of exposure to customer input and the extent of competition on performance, and 3) does not mediate the effects of quality orientation and physical proximity on performance. Our study highlights the importance of creating highly charged product development teams in order to achieve exceptional performance. Further, our results indicate that some of the factors suggested by traditional social psychology research for enhancing team effectiveness (e.g., physical proximity and team longevity) may not necessarily create charged teams. Instead, charged teams need a special arrangement, in which members are accountable to the team and where their evaluations and rewards are also linked to the performance of the team. In addition, although a strong emphasis on quality is considered to be beneficial for new products, as our results indicate, such emphasis cannot create a charged atmosphere. Moreover, our research suggests that if the organization structure does not permit frequent contact between individuals across functional boundaries, the creation of a strongly charged team and development of a successful new product will be hindered.