Conflicts in new product development:frequency, consequences, and handlingrecommendations

New product development (NPD) nowadays often relies on team-based structures with crossfunctionalteams. This organization form can increase NPD performance by an early integration ofdifferent point of views but – at the same time – can be assumed to deteriorate the performance byprovoking conflicts within and between teams. Drawing upon a sample of 116 Germanmanufacturing firms, this article investigates this contradiction. A typology of conflicts is developedand used to analyse the frequency and the consequences of different conflict sources and aspects onteam and NPD performance by applying covariance structure modelling as well as cluster andvariance analysis...