Team stressors, management support, and project and process outcomes in new product development projects

Abstract

Stress is an important research area in the group and organizational behavior literature, yet it is underestimated in the new product development scholarship. In particular, the impact of team stressors on project and process outcomes was not empirically investigated in NPD project teams. In this study, we test the influence of team stressors, consisting of team crisis and anxiety, on the project/process outcomes, such as team learning, speed-to-market, new product success and proficiently executing the each stage of product development process, including the degree of management support during the project. By investigating 96 NPD projects, we found that when a high degree of management support is seen during the project, team crisis positively influences team learning, speed-to-market and new product success, and team anxiety positively impacts speed-to-market. Interestingly, when low management support was noted during the project, we were not able to find any statistical association between team crisis and anxiety, and project outcomes. Also, we found that when there was a high level of management support, team anxiety is positively related to the proficiency in executing the idea generation, market/technological assessment, product development, and product commercialization stages; and team crisis is positively related to the market/technological assessment, product development, product testing, and product commercialization stages. Further, we found that team anxiety influences the proficiency in the product development stage regardless of low or high level of management support. Next, managerial and theoretical implications were discussed.