بین المللی سازی ، توسعه محصول و نتایج عملکرد : مطالعه تطبیقی ​​از 10 کشور جهان

Product development is recognized as innovative value creating effort that has become important in the high-risk, globally competitive environment. This paper presents a model that links product development practices with product development performance in the context of internationalization. The empirical results base the analyses on International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS IV) data from 10 countries (i.e., Argentina, China, Canada, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Turkey and USA). We develop several hypotheses with respect to the relationships between product development practices and their outcome measures. We test the hypotheses with data from 458 manufacturing units. This study suggests that many small and medium sized firms adopt internationalization as their new competitive weapon. Small firms seem to be more effective in utilizing product design and manufacturing involvement while large firms standardize and formalize the product development practices. Both small and large firms utilize cross-functional work for achieving organizational and technological integration. The improvement efforts toward enhancing product development outcomes vary depending on different regions of the world.

Internationalization is the extent of globalization of market and operational scope (Johanson and Vahlne, 1977, Erramilli et al., 1999, Madsen, 2005 and Mockaitis et al., 2006). Although the potential benefits of internationalization (e.g., volume economies, market intelligence, product development and operational flexibility and stability) are indicative (Porter, 1985 and Kogut, 1985), there has been inconsistent empirical evidence about the impact of internationalization on financial performance (Sullivan, 1994). The impact of internationalization is indirectly realized across long causal chains. The methods of measuring the effects of internationalization should examine diversely complex relationships (Riahi-Belkaoui, 1998). An important way to examine how firms configure their organizational resources, particularly product development practices, manufacturing facilities, technological and organizational integration, is to consider the contexts of internationalization. In today's highly competitive marketplace, firms strategically locate their product development organizations and manufacturing facilities around the world. The challenges for many of these firms are how to configure their product development practices, organizational and technological integration. It is useful to consider the theory of product life cycle in examining product development practices as firms internationalize their markets and operations. The basic idea of the product life cycle is that business processes evolve through a series of life cycle stages from birth to death, with each stage displaying clearly defined and relatively stable characteristics (Stonebaker and Liao, 2006). Vernon, 1966, Vernon, 1979 and Vernon, 1986 suggested three stages of the international product life cycle (PLC) patterns—(1) development of new products in advanced industrial countries; (2) extension of new markets beyond national borders; (3) mass production and marketing in less developed countries. Increasingly, firms use internationalization in support of their products and services offerings in the widest possible markets in the world. This study examines three questions. First, in the context of internationalization do firms adopt different product development practices? Second, to what extent do the above product development practices improve product development and manufacturing performance outcomes? Third, how do the above practices different in diverse regions of the world? This paper is organized in three sections: the first develops the theoretical foundations upon which our hypotheses about the new product development practices are constructed. The second reports on the research methods used, and the third discusses our results and conclusions.

The research used a single-method (survey) and a single and multiple-informant from each manufacturing unit, which can cause common method variance and informant bias. The overall product development performance is measured mostly by single responder's assessment from the manufacturing plant unit. In addition, the data collected is perceptual. This can sometimes be problematic, especially in collecting performance data, as managers might be unwilling to admit poor performance or accurately assess the overall performance of the team. In spite of these limitations this study provides a theoretical rationale for these variables, and it develops scales to measure them. These findings also encourage researchers to carefully examine the international product life cycle theory into product development practices that include front-end planning, cross-functional work and formalization/standardization. This study suggests that internationalization is not necessarily the phenomena of large firms. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) follow the paths of growth by utilizing the route of innovation—product development in particular (Hong and Jeong, 2006). Many small and medium sized firms adopt internationalization as their new competitive weapon. Small firms seem to be more effective in utilizing product design and manufacturing involvement while large firms standardize and formalize the product development practices. Both small and large firms utilize cross-functional work for achieving organizational and technological integration. Internationalization is not limited to developed countries. The improvement efforts toward enhancing product development outcomes vary depending on different regions of the world. Interestingly enough, firms from developing countries employ all product development practices in balanced ways similar to what firms from European countries do. However, North American firms (USA/Canada) do not suggest that they employ product development practices for achieving organizational and technological integration. The small samples (n = 61) might not be representative of USA/Canada manufacturing firms. Other researchers may investigate differences in product development practices across industries. Future studies may empirically examine practices of SMEs and large global firms in terms of cooperative product development practices, risks and opportunities associated with their partnership alliance, the extent of organizational and technological integration and the effective use of a comprehensive set of product development performance measures (Jin and Hong, 2007).