Abstract

Network organizations in manufacturing industries have captured tremendous attention in recent years. Firms involved in networks construct a long-term relationship to achieve professional division of labor, complementary flexibility, and risk pooling. R&D management, under such a circumstance, is also propelled to make adjustment from intra-firm governance to inter-firm governance to adapt the fast-changing administrative environment. Taiwanese industries are largely composed of small and medium sized firms (SMEs) that develop their strength based on networked structures. Quick responses and flexibilities of SMEs are manifested in many facets including their operations, capital resources, and value chains. Well-known Central Satellite system encouraged by the government in Taiwan is a kind of network organizations attributed by Miles and Snow (1992) as "Stable Networks". Performance of new product development (NPD) is gradually considered as a key success factor in overall performance of a firm, especially in a knowledge-intensive global competition. Thus, we consider one important dimension of NPD - configuration management, and postulate several hypotheses concerning configuration management in distributed innovation networks in this research. Shortage of empirical researches based on the survey method leads the researchers to develop a questionnaire strategy to collect firms enlisted in Taiwan's Central Satellite manufacturers and empirically tested relevant hypotheses. Regression models suggest some interesting empirical results to our research interest. Project managers, interaction between departments, and interaction of technical documentation, and dominance of a firm along NPD are found to be critical to the performance of configuration management in NPD. Managerial implications are suggested following relevant research findings. The preeminence of research finding sheds light to new product management in stably networked organizations that intend to employ an innovation strategy more effectively.