R.A.W. Kok

What Makes Product Development Market Oriented? Towards a Conceptual Framework

While there is quite some literature on the relationship between market orientation and product development, it is still unclear what market-oriented product development really is. In this article the authors present a conceptual framework detailing the elements of market-oriented product development and the relationships between these elements. More specifically, market-oriented product development is conceptualised as a combination of specific capabilities and market information processing activities. These capabilities encapsulate the values and norms, knowledge and skills, technical and managerial knowledge systems, which enable learning about markets through information processing behaviour in product development and improve this market learning behaviour. As such it is argued that market-oriented product development may be regarded as an organisational learning capability.

Green New Product Development: The Pivotal Role of Product Greenness

This study aims to develop an integrative framework for green new product development (NPD) based on the existing literature and to empirically study the applicability of that integrative framework. This study answers three calls: for research that is rooted in a traditional NPD perspective, for research that integrates marketing aspects in a model of green NPD, and for research that acknowledges variations in greenness. The results from eight case studies in two industries (i.e., the chemical and food industries) substantiate the integrative framework and suggest that it provides a good basis for understanding green NPD. The study demonstrates that green NPD is not fundamentally different from traditional NPD but does contain features and underlying mechanisms that reflect the increased complexity of green NPD. The framework incorporates the targeting and positioning of green product innovations, thus establishing itself as a holistic framework. Most importantly, the study shows how greenness plays a pivotal role in tying the various elements of the framework together. The realized greenness of a new product is a central concept that helps managers understand complex relationships among industry type, green targeting, and green positioning.

Alliance Governance and Product Innovation Project Decision Making

Purpose – The purpose of this exploratory study is explaining the effects of control and interdependence on decision making at the level of product innovation projects in dyadic strategic alliances.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on alliance research, strategic decision‐making research and product innovation literature a conceptual framework is developed using a multiple case research methodology.Findings – The empirical case results indicate that decision‐making effectiveness in product innovation projects is dependent on the nature of the decision‐making process which, in turn, is affected by alliance governance structure characteristics.Research limitation/implications – The case research results only gives an in‐depth understanding of the nature of the effects. A large‐scale quantitative study is needed to arrive at generalizations taking into account industry‐specific and firm‐specific factors.Practical implications – Managers may want to take the effects on decision making into account when de...

Antecedents of Market Orientation in Semi-Public Service Organizations: A Study of Dutch Housing Associations

The purpose of this study is to explain which factors affect the market orientation of semi-public service organizations in their transition from public to private. Change capacity and interdepartmental and organizational system factors are hypothesized to affect market orientation, which is operationalized in behavioural and cultural dimensions. Results of a survey among top-level executives of Dutch housing associations show that interdepartmental and organizational system factors have a significant effect. The most important antecedents, however, are two change capacity factors: process improvement control and top management emphasis. This suggests that change capacity is crucial for understanding market orientation in many service industries.

Organizational diagnosis in practice: a cross-classification analysis using the DEL-technique

In this paper, an empirical research about organizational diagnosis in The Netherlands is presented. The main research question is whether the usage of the kind of conceptual organizational diagnosis model and computer support in diagnosing problem situations is contingent upon background characteristics of management consultants and their agencies. The DEL-technique was applied to test a number of propositions among 72 respondents of a random sample of 300 Dutch consulting agencies. The results indicate that size of an agency, educational specialization, and work experience are important characteristics with respect to their usage of conceptual organizational diagnosis models. Computer support was not found to be dependent on management consultant and agency characteristics in the specific hypothesized relationships.