NPD Projects in Search of Top Management Support: The Role of Team Leader Social Capital

Barthelemy Chollet (), Sébastien Brion, Vincent Chauvet (), Caroline Mothe () and Mickaël Géraudel
Additional contact information
Barthelemy Chollet: EESC-GEM Grenoble Ecole de Management
Vincent Chauvet: IREGE - Institut de Recherche en Gestion et en Economie - USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry] - Université Savoie Mont Blanc
Caroline Mothe: IREGE - Institut de Recherche en Gestion et en Economie - USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry] - Université Savoie Mont Blanc
Mickaël Géraudel: CEROM - Centre d'Etudes et de Recherche sur les Organisations et le Management - Groupe Sup de Co Montpellier (GSCM) - Montpellier Business School

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: A number of studies have found that the performance of NPD projects greatly depends on the support they get from top management. However, research into why some projects get more support than others has been limited. The present paper takes a political approach to NPD, in which top management support is considered to be a function of a project leader's ability to influence decision processes through personal relationships. Mobilizing the bridging perspective of social capital, we argue that project leaders need both strong ties to high-ranking others and sparseness in their networks. Vertical strong ties bring direct support and solidarity, resulting in improved access to resources and priority over other projects; sparseness provides exposure to the full range of information and interpretations in the organization, resulting in a more accurate picture of the political landscape and thus enabling the implementation of an appropriate influence strategy. A PLS analysis of a sample of 73 French project leaders involved in NPD projects provided support for our hypotheses. Hence, we contribute to a very recent stream of research showing that the structural and relational dimensions of social capital are complementary.

Keywords: Strong ties; boundary spanning; new product development; organizational influence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00918553v2
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in M@n@gement, 2012, 15 (1), pp.44-75. ⟨10.3917/mana.151.0044⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-00918553v2/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: NPD Projects in Search of Top Management Support: The Role of Team Leader Social Capital (2012)
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:hal:journl:hal-00918553

DOI: 10.3917/mana.151.0044

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().