Management Control, Innovation and Strategic Objectives: Interactions and Convergence in Product Development Networks

Many studies have focused on the topic of product innovation. As a key element of how industrial organisations work, of how competition is shaped and how economic growth is realised, innovation provides an interesting research field, which will never be fully explored. Industrial organisations explore these grounds through strategic processes in which objectives should guide product development processes. Ideas, alternatives or decisions form these processes in which heterogeneous actors need to be aligned and coordinated towards the final product innovation. Heterogeneity is a key aspect here; different, new technologies, conflicting objectives, different opinions and different management practices for example, are part of this process. Although these elements have been studied extensively in extant research, I identify several gaps in the existing literature, which I in turn strive to fill with this thesis. First, a perspective of the interactions in innovation processes is needed with a focus on control mechanisms and the mobilisation of strategic objectives. Secondly, focusing on control, the way calculative boundaries are created and explored and how these may be overcome needs more development and empirical insights. Thirdly, the interaction of control mechanisms and the coordination of product development networks through these interactions lack empirical insights and build an interesting research ground. I do not provide a holistic framework or a contingent perspective of how organisations should manage innovation. Rather I discuss the many ways in which product development networks become convergent through the interaction of control mechanisms, which may act as a vehicle or translator of strategic objectives...