Managing New Product Development Projects: What Drives Within-Project Development Cost Compensation?
研究大型汽车公司在新产品开发项目中，如何在正式评审之间频繁进行小额财务资源分配决策，并识别出一种项目内成本补偿方法，该方法要求团队用其他部分的节约来弥补超支，以控制总成本。
Unexpected events and new information during a new product development (NPD) project may require responsiveness regarding development efforts and new decisions about the allocation of financial resources. Prior research mainly focused on major decisions about financial resource allocations at predefined milestones; this study zooms in on more frequent and smaller financial resource allocation decisions between formal reviews. This research is based on a case study of a large car company that manages NPD projects with long lead times and large budgets, which are often reviewed and adjusted because of new events that unfold during these projects. We identify an approach for within-project NPD cost compensation at these more frequent and smaller financial resource allocation decisions, which prioritizes the goal of keeping NPD costs in check by requiring teams to compensate NPD cost overruns elsewhere within their project. The study empirically investigates factors associated with the use of this approach, which are based on the need and the feasibility of finding cost compensation. This is particularly relevant for development projects with a high level of uncertainty, which require regular budgetary responsiveness.