The Impact of Misalignment of Organizational Structure and Product Architecture on Quality in Complex Product Development

Bilal Gokpinar (), Wallace J. Hopp () and Seyed M. R. Iravani ()
Additional contact information
Bilal Gokpinar: Department of Management Science and Innovation, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom
Wallace J. Hopp: Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
Seyed M. R. Iravani: Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208

Management Science, 2010, vol. 56, issue 3, 468-484

Abstract: Product architecture and organizational communication play significant roles in complex product development efforts. By using networks to characterize both product structure and communication patterns, we examine the impact of mismatches between these on new product development (NPD) performance. Specifically, we study the vehicle development process of a major auto company and use vehicle quality (warranty repairs) as our NPD performance metric. Our empirical results indicate that centrality in a product architecture network is related to quality according to an inverted-U relationship, which suggests that vehicle subsystems of intermediate complexity exhibit abnormally high levels of quality problems. To identify specific subsystems in danger of excessive quality problems, we characterize mismatches between product architecture and organizational structure by defining a new metric, called coordination deficit, and show that it is positively associated with quality problems. These results deepen our understanding of the impact of organizational structure and product architecture on the NPD process and provide tools with which managers can diagnose and improve their NPD systems.

Keywords: new product development; product architecture; organizational structure; complex networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1090.1117 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:56:y:2010:i:3:p:468-484

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().