Convince me or commit me? Avoid the cognitive trap induced by Non-Human Actors in early stages of NPD

Fabien Jean (), Pascal Le Masson () and Benoit Weil ()
Additional contact information
Fabien Jean: CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Pascal Le Masson: CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Benoit Weil: CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Akrich, Callon & Latour's concept of interessement has been broadly used in NPD. A gap in this theoretical stream of research remains in the difference between human actors' commitment and convincement. The first concerns the enrolment of competent allies while the second concerns arousing top managers' approbation. To address this gap, our qualitative research takes place at SAFRAN, a corporate conglomerate of highly specialised companies. We take the focus of non-human actors (NHA) involved in early stages of NPD analysing 28 NHA of 5 different representational media in 4 different contexts. To characterise NHAs we review the literature on artefacts made within NPD and identify two utmost types (A and B). We find that NHAs which match type A artefacts do better at convincing in prospect of an entry gate to development and that NHAs which match type B artefacts do better at committing in the ideation process. The difficulty for managers is that type A or type B artefacts cannot be recognised according to their representational medium. The consequence is a misunderstanding: some NHA which match type B artefacts create no interessement because type A artefacts were expected, introducing the risk of missing an innovation opportunity. However their failure may not be definitive as managers have the ability to switch from convincement logic to commitment logic. This change in interaction is more probable to happen in informal meetings than in distant artefacts review. Some NHA take advantage of their A-B artefact ambiguity, human actors interact with them by alternating logics, inducing richer decisionmaking and ideation. We conclude that if managers were aware of the two types of artefacts they could adapt their attitude accordingly and take better decisions. We suggest that managers favour artefacts presentations in informal meetings to favour switching between convincement and commitment logics and avoid the cognitive trap.

Keywords: innovation; prototype; artefacts; ideation; decision; actor-network theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-06-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://minesparis-psl.hal.science/hal-00976059v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in 21st International Product Development Management Conference, Limerick : Irlande (2014), Jun 2014, Limerick, Ireland

Downloads: (external link)
https://minesparis-psl.hal.science/hal-00976059v1/document (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:hal:journl:hal-00976059

Access Statistics for this paper

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