The effects of relational knowledge emphasis on new product development strategy

Abstract

Business-to-Business (B2B) firms often rely on relational knowledge to manage customer relationships. Previous studies have provided substantial insights into how such knowledge affects relationship performance. However, they overlook an important situation where a firm simultaneously possesses different types of relational knowledge, yet knowledge is also dispersedly distributed across areas of expertise within the organization. To bridge this gap, we propose the notion of relational knowledge emphasis, which captures the extent to which a firm's relational knowledge is disproportionately allocated to certain areas of expertise and investigate how such knowledge emphasis affects its NPD strategy. We suggest that different types of relational knowledge emphasis (i.e., interactional, functional, and market) influence how a firm orchestrates its resources, thus affecting its NPD strategy. Moreover, we find that such impacts are contingent on a firm's internal and external environmental needs, including ownership structure and technology turbulence. Using data from 178 B2B firms, we find robust evidence supporting our hypotheses.