Temporal Context of Organizational Learning in New Product Development Projects

Faced with the evolution of the competitive environment, firms have to find the delicate balance between two goals that are sometimes contradictory: accelerate the time spent on product development and leave time to the personnel implicated in these projects to develop collective learning. This research shows that the project 'time' has an important influence on the realization of collective learning during new product development projects. The commitment of the project team in activities like experimentation, detection and correction of errors, and research of new combinations which constitute organizational learning depends on the two conceptions of the project 'time'. If the duration of the project and the time spent by the functional personnel on the project constitute the objective time of the project (first conception of time), the project 'time' is also a subjective time which corresponds to the project team's shared vision of the project's deadlines (second conception of time)