The role of alliance management, big data analytics and information visibility on new-product development capability

Rameshwar Dubey; David J Bryde; Gary Graham; Cyril Foropon; Sushma Kumari; Omprakash Gupta

doi:10.1007/s10479-021-04390-9

The role of alliance management, big data analytics and information visibility on new-product development capability

Ann Oper Res. 2021 Nov 19:1-25. doi: 10.1007/s10479-021-04390-9. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Rameshwar Dubey¹, David J Bryde¹, Gary Graham², Cyril Foropon³, Sushma Kumari⁴, Omprakash Gupta⁵

Affiliations

¹ Liverpool Business School, Liverpool John Moore's University, Liverpool, Merseyside L3 5UG UK.
² Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds, Maurice Keyworth Building, Leeds, LS2 9JT UK.
³ Montpellier Business School, Montpellier Research in Management, 2300 Avenue des Moulins, 34185 Montpellier, France.
⁴ Faculty of Business, Law and Politics, University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX UK.
⁵ College of Business, University of Houston-Downtown, Houston, USA.

Abstract

Many organizations are increasingly investing in building dynamic capabilities to gain competitive advantage. New products play an important role in gaining competitive advantage and can significantly boost organizational performance. Although new product development (NPD) is widely recognized as a potentially vital source of competitive advantage, organizations face challenges in terms of developing the right antecedents or capabilities to influence NPD performance. Our research suggests that organizations should invest in building alliance management capability (AMC), big data analytics capability (BDAC) and information visibility (IV) to achieve their desired NPD success. Informed by the dynamic capabilities view of the firm (DCV) we have stated seven research hypotheses. We further tested our hypotheses using 219 usable respondents gathered using a pre-tested instrument. The hypotheses were tested using variance based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The results of our study paint an interesting picture. Our study makes some significant contribution to the DCV and offers some useful directions to practitioners engaged in NPD in the big data analytics era. We demonstrate that AMC and BDAC are lower-order dynamic capabilities and that AMC has a positive and significant influence on BDAC. In turn, AMC and BDAC influence NPD under the moderating influence of IV. Ours is one of the first studies to empirically establish an association among three distinct dynamic capabilities which are often considered in isolation: AMC, BDAC and NPD. Our findings support emergent views on dynamic capabilities and their classification into various orders. Lastly, we provide empirical evidence that information visibility acts as a contingent variable to both AMC and BDAC effects on NPD. We end our paper by outlining some limitations of our study and by offering useful future research directions.

Keywords: Alliance management capability; Big data analytics capability; Dynamic capability view; Information visibility; NPD; PLS-SEM.