Analyzing product development task networks to examine organizational change

Shawn T. Collins, Joe A. Bradley, Ali A. Yassine

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This paper uses network analysis (NA) to study task interactions in the product development process (PDP) at a small engineering company (Smallcomp). We examine Smallcomps organizational changes by comparing its PDP network properties at two points in time. The analysis identifies patterns of centralization, role specialization, and formalized control. This validates themes from organizational behavior and quality management literature regarding how organizations learn from experience, grow in size, and control their process variation. It demonstrates several insights to manage the PDP as both a second (i.e., effectively executing) and third order (i.e., highlighting underlying premises and assumptions) form of organizational control. First, reducing variation in task outputs is an understandable approach to controlling a PDP. However, it is important to reduce variation in task inputs as well. Second, tasks have varying roles and burdens in terms of how they share information with other tasks in the PDP. Companies seeking to support multiple concurrent projects must align their organizational resources to the distribution of labor created by the information flow among PDP tasks. Finally, an NA metric called Simmelian ties can measure effective concurrency in a PDP by identifying both valuable and ineffective iteration among groups of tasks.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number5325871
Pages (from-to)513-525
Number of pages13
JournalIEEE Transactions on Engineering Management
Volume57
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2010
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Brokerage
  • centrality
  • concurrent task execution
  • design structure matrix (DSM)
  • information flow
  • key player measures
  • network analysis (NA)
  • organizational change
  • product development (PD)

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Strategy and Management
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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