Exploring why more communication is not better: insights from a computational model of cross-functional teams

Abstract Recent evidence suggests that communication and performance in cross-functional new product development (NPD) teams are curvilinearly related, but fails to pinpoint the reasons for this relationship. We developed a computational model to study the communication activities of cross-functional new product development teams. Our simulation confirms the recent evidence and offers insights into the underlying reasons for the curvilinearity. We provide guidelines regarding when the top performance occurs, for both frequency and duration of synchronous and asynchronous communication. Further, we perform a series of post-hoc analyses to examine the reasons for the curvilinearity of the communication–performance relationship. The work concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical applications of the results.

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