درک مستقیم تیم به عنوان یک ساختار پیوسته و خلاقیت محصول جدید : نقش تلاطم محیطی، تجربه تیم، و استرس

Although past research has reported the benefits of intuition in new product decision-making (i.e., higher quality product; enhanced customer satisfaction), intuition has largely been studied as an individual phenomenon and little work has examined the role of intuition on new product development (NPD) project teams. Furthermore, in a turbulent environment, NPD project teams may rely more on intuitive judgments, and other factors such as experience and stress may also influence the relationship between team intuition and team decision making. Drawing from the organizational design literature on creativity in decision making, this study builds a conceptual model of NPD team intuition and its effect on the team's ability to generate creative new products. We then derive hypotheses regarding team intuition, stress, environmental turbulence, and new product creativity, and test the hypotheses using data from a sample of 155 firms operating in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey. We specifically test whether an inverted-U relationship exists between team intuition and new product creativity (that is, a balance of both intuitive and rational judgments is preferred), and whether this relationship is moderated by team experience and stress. Moreover, direct impact of turbulent conditions (i.e. market and technical turbulence) on intuition was also examined. The results of our empirical study with a sample of 310 new product/project developers and 155 project managers showed a positive and linear relation between turbulent conditions (both market and technical) and team intuition and an inverted U-shaped team intuition–new product creativity relation for teams with high experience and low stress. Finally, theoretical implications for future research and managerial implications for practitioners are discussed in the conclusion section.

Intuition has become a popular research topic in the strategic management (Khatri and Ng, 2000, Elbanna and Child, 2007 and Dane and Pratt, 2007), human resource management (Andersen, 2000 and Hodgkinson and Sadler-Smith, 2003), marketing management (Wierenga, 2006), and project management literature (Leybourne and Sadler-Smith, 2006). Specifically, this literature suggests that many managers or employees embrace intuition as an effective approach in response to situations in a turbulent environment where decisions need to be made quickly or unexpectedly (Sonenshein, 2007), there may not be predetermined guidelines or rules to be followed (Burke and Miller, 1999), and explicit cues are not readily available to make cognitive judgments (Hitt et al., 1998). Researchers have reported various benefits of intuition in decision-making. These are: to accelerate decision-making, to improve decision-making outcomes such as a higher quality product and enhanced customer satisfaction, and to solve creative and/or less structured problems such as new product planning (e.g., Glaser, 1995). Even though many of these studies on intuition reported that intuitive judgment is a common practice among managers in a new product development (NPD) planning (Glaser, 1995, Shapiro and Spence, 1997 and Burke and Miller, 1999); no empirical investigation yet exists on intuition in NPD project teams, despite the fact that they are commonly used in NPD projects. It is estimated that about 75% of NPD projects are team projects (Griffin, 1997). In a NPD project team, intuition is not only an individual but also a collective phenomenon (i.e., decisions in the NPD process are often made by team members collectively). While one of the basic assumptions about group decision-making is that they make cognitive judgments (Akgun et al., 2008), NPD teams may rely on their intuitive judgments because NPD projects involve high levels of task-related job complexity, as well as process and environmental uncertainty. Engaged in various activities in such a complex and turbulent environment, NPD project teams may need to make intuitive judgments during the NPD process, such as choosing a new product idea among many others. Besides turbulent conditions, other factors may lead employees at work to use and rely on their intuitive judgments in making decisions related to innovation; these include experience or knowledge, and stress. Specifically, the literature suggests that intuition may unconsciously integrate experience and knowledge of employees into responsive and productive decision-making and, ultimately, into innovative solutions, particularly under rapidly changing, turbulent environmental decisions (Glaser, 1995). The design literature provides guidance on creativity in decision making (e.g., Schön, 1983 and Schön, 1987), focusing particularly on the need for balance between divergent and convergent processes in order to arrive at the best possible solution or decision. This literature has not been widely applied to the NPD project team context, yet would seem to be relevant in understanding how NPD project teams can make creative decisions in challenging conditions. Walck (1996), for instance, reviewing the body of research on managerial decision-making, argued that intuition appears to be positively associated with creativity, and intuitive decision-making is especially effective in turbulent conditions. Furthermore, Hallowell (2005) argues that in the current business climate, organizations are beginning to experience lower effectiveness of both cognitive and intuitive judgments made by employees and lack of creativity due to the chronic stresses of intense workload pressures in turbulent conditions. This literature suggests that even experienced team members use intuition in turbulent conditions, and that stress may adversely affect the impact of intuitive, creative decisions on organizational outcomes. However, the interrelationships between turbulent conditions, experience, stress and creativity in decision making by NPD project teams have not been investigated. For example, Khatri and Ng (2000) surveyed senior managers of companies representing computer, banking, and utility industries in the U.S. and found that intuitive judgments were positively associated with organizational performance in an unstable environment, but negatively in a stable environment; however, they did not investigate the role of experience and stress in the relationship between intuitive judgment and creativity. In sum, the extant literature does not yet adequately investigate the intuitive judgments made by NPD project teams, how these may be affected by the often turbulent and stressful environments in which they work, and how the team's creativity may be affected. It is also possible that a more experienced NPD team may be able to handle these challenges better, but this is also unresolved in the extant literature. Given that so much NPD is team-based, it is an important research issue to improve our understanding of the decision-making process of NPD project teams, and in particular how the team's intuitive judgments and its creativity influence its ability to bring products to market effectively. Our research objective is twofold. First, we examine the relationships between turbulent conditions and intuitive judgments, and intuitive judgments and creativity in product innovation, so as to better understand the effectiveness of decision-making process of NPD project teams. Second, we investigate the moderating effects of NPD project team experience and stress on the relationship between intuitive judgments and creativity is moderated by NPD team experience and stress. Based on the conceptual framework we develop in the next section, we build a conceptual model of NPD team intuition and its impact on the team's creativity in new product decision making, and derive a set of hypotheses regarding team intuition, experience, stress, environmental turbulence, and new product creativity. We test our hypotheses using a sample of 155 firms operating in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey. We present our analytical results, and discuss theoretical implications and further research.

Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations, and correlations among the variables. As shown in the table, both market and technical turbulence were positively related to team intuition (r = .58, p < .01 for market turbulence; r = .45, p < .01 for technical turbulence). Team intuition correlated negatively with new product creativity (r = −.49, p < .01). Finally, new product creativity was not significantly related to neither team experience (r = .07, ns) nor team stress (r = .05, ns). A confirmatory factor analysis that covered the main variables (i.e., market and technical turbulence, team intuition, and new product creativity) and the moderators (team experience and stress) suggested that the model fits the data well (χ2 (438) = 761. 72; p < .01; χ2/df = 1.73; comparative fit index = .92; Tucker–Lewis index = .90; root-mean-square error of approximation = .043). It also showed that all of the factor loadings were significant, with the lowest t value 2.14 (p < .01), thus confirming the convergent validity of the constructs. Nested chi-square difference tests also suggested that the six-factor model had a statistically better fit than did all of the other alternative models. For example, compared with a five-factor model combining the items of team intuition and new product creativity into a single factor, the six-factor model had a significantly better fit, Δχ2 (1) = 59.43, p < .01. Moreover, the six-factor model had a significantly better fit than did a single factor model, Δχ2 (10) = 132.57, p < .01. These results provide evidence for discriminant validity.As recommended by Bagozzi et al. (1991), a series of two-factor models were estimated in order to assess the discriminant validity. To do that, individual factor correlations, one at a time, were restricted to unity. The fit of the restricted models was compared to those of the original model. The chi-square change (Δχ2) in each model was significant, Δχ2 > 4.65, which suggested that the constructs demonstrated discriminant validity. Furthermore, as seen in Table 1 the relatively low to moderate correlations provided further evidence of discriminant validity. Examination of the correlation matrix also indicates no multicollinearity among the variables. The intercorrelations among the central variables of the study ranged from 0.05 and 0.58, which is well below the 0.80 value suggested by Hair et al. (1995). Skewness ranged from −1.13 to 0.64 and kurtosis ranged from −1.27 to 0.19 values are well below the levels suggested for transformation of variables. These results indicated that the variables were well below the level required transformation of variables (skewness of 2 and kurtosis of 5 as indicated by Ghiselli et al., 1981). The hypotheses were examined in two regression models. First, to assess the impact of turbulent conditions, team intuition was regressed on market and technical turbulence. The results (see Table 2) showed that both market turbulence (β = .33, p < .01) and technical turbulence (β = .35, p < .01) were significantly and positively associated with team intuition, supporting Hypothesis 1. Fig. 1 illustrates this relationship based on low—making cognitive judgments only, intermediate—a combination of both, and high—making intuitive judgments only as well as market and technical conditions and suggests that environmental turbulence-team intuition relationship is stronger when turbulent conditions (both market and technical conditions) are high as opposed to when they are low.Second, to assess the impact of team intuition on new product creativity using team experience and stress as moderating factors we used hierarchical regression analysis (Cohen and Cohen, 1983). After centering our independent variables (Aiken and West, 1991), we entered into a regression equation the control variable, team size, in the first step, the main effect variables (intuition, experience, and stress) in the second step, and to control for potential linear trends, the linear two-way and three-way interactions in the third step. Next, to test our main prediction that team intuition would have a curvilinear relation to new product creativity (Hypothesis 2), we entered the quadratic team intuition term in the fourth step. As shown in Table 3, the coefficient associated with this term was statistically nonsignificant (β = .06, p > .05), and thus Hypothesis 2 is rejected.We hypothesized that team experience would moderate the inverted U-shaped team intuition–new product creativity relation (Hypothesis 3). To test this hypothesis we entered the relevant quadratic-by-linear interaction (team intuition2 × team experience) in the fifth step. The coefficient term was statistically significant (β = −.29, p < .05), thus Hypothesis 3 was supported. As seen in Fig. 2, the relation between team intuition and new product creativity followed an inverted U-shaped function for teams with high experience. In addition, under conditions where both intuitive and cognitive judgments are used (i.e., towards the center of the inverted-U function), teams with high experience exhibited higher new product creativity than those with less experience.In order to further analyze this interaction, we estimated simple slopes at three levels of team intuition: low—making cognitive judgments (one standard deviation below the maximum of the regression curve), intermediate—a combination of both (maximum of the regression curve), and high—making intuitive judgments only (one standard deviation above the maximum of the curve). Results indicated that when team experience was high, the simple slope of the regression curve had a positive, nonsignificant value for low—making cognitive judgments only (b = 0.86, t = 1.12, p > .05), did not differ significantly from zero at intermediate—a combination of both (b = −.13, t = −.39, p > .05), and had a significant negative value for high—making intuitive judgments only (b = −1.66, t = −3.21, p < .05). When team experience was low, the simple slopes of the regression line did not differ significantly from zero (p > .05) at low—making cognitive judgments only, intermediate—a combination of both, or high—making intuitive judgments only. Therefore, these results provide support for Hypothesis 3. Finally, we predicted that team stress would moderate the inverted U-shaped relation between team intuition and new product creativity (Hypothesis 4). To test this hypothesis we entered the relevant interaction term (team intuition2 × team stress) in the sixth step. Inconsistent with Hypothesis 4, the coefficient associated with this term was not statistically significant (β = −.05, p > .05). As seen in Fig. 2, the relation between team intuition and new product creativity followed an inverted U-shaped function for teams with high experience. In addition, under conditions of intermediate intuition (a combination of intuitive and cognitive judgments), teams with high experience exhibited higher new product creativity than those with less experience.