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Innovation Strategy and Sanctioned Conflict:
A New Edge in Innovation?
Barbara Dyer and X. Michael Song
Teamwork and harmony are worthy objectives, but a healthy dose of conflict also
plays an important role in fostering innovation. In their pursuit of teamwork and
harmony, companies run the risk of suppressing the creative tension that brings
vitality to new-product development (NPD) efforts. Furthermore, a firm’s choice
of innovation strategy may have a significant effect on anization’s capa-
bility for managing conflict.
Using results from a survey of 290 marketing and R&D managers from .
firms in the electronics industries, Barbara Dyer and X. Michael Song explore the
link between strategy and conflict, and the effect this link has on NPD ess.
Their study examines the following issues: the influence of business strategy on
specific conflict-handling behaviors; the relationship between those conflict-
handling behaviors and positive conflict es; and the relationship between
constructive conflict and new-product ess. The study classifies firms predom-
inantly pursuing a more aggressive NPD strategy as prospectors and less ag-
gressive firms as defenders. Three conflict-handling mechanisms are identified:
integrating behaviors, forcing behaviors, and avoiding behaviors.
Compared to the prospector firms, the defender firms in this study perceived
significantly higher levels of conflict in anizations. In handling conflict,
the prospector firms perceived a higher level of integrative behavior than the
defender firms. The defenders perceived higher levels of forcing and avoiding
conflict behaviors. The study identifies a strong, positive relationship between
integrative behaviors and constructive conflict. Positive relationships are also
identified between constructive conflict and the ess of cross-functional rela-
tionships, as well as between constructive conflict and NPD business ess.
For the firms in t