Paradoxical Practices and Product Innovation Performance

Abstract

New product development (NPD) is a complex non-linear process that requires effective management of continuous balance of managerial tensions. Scholarly efforts to balance tensions along the innovation process have left a disproportionate gap in our understanding of how multiple paradoxical practices can help achieve superior NPD performance. Leveraging the paradox theory, we hypothesize that the four pairs of paradoxical practices, namely the performing, organizing, learning, and belonging paradoxes, are positively associated with NPD performance (product effectiveness and process efficiency). Moreover, we assume firms’ country of operation moderates the relationship between the paradoxical practices and NPD performance. Using empirical data derived from a survey of 200 ?rms in China and 164 firms in Finland and Sweden, we apply hierarchical linear regression to test our hypotheses. The results indicate that the performing paradox has a positive relationship with product effectiveness, whereas the organizing paradox is positively linked to process efficiency. In addition, the learning paradox was found to positively influence both product effectiveness and process efficiency. Lastly, the moderating role of firms’ country of operation is significantly supported by several links between the paradoxical practices and NPD performance. This moderating result indicates that Chinese firms are better able to deal with paradoxical tensions present in NPD than Nordic firms due to Chinese cultural tradition of embracing yin yang and the fact that Chinese often prefer to find a way to pursue two seemingly conflicting ends of a tension rather than choosing one.