Questioning in Distributed Product Development Teams: Supporting Shared Understanding

Distributed teams are an increasingly common feature of New Product Development (NPD). Key to the success of these teams is the development of both short and longerterm shared understanding. Lack of shared understanding has been recognized as a significant challenge, particularly in the context globally distributed NPD activities. Poor shared understanding can ultimately result in delays and rework. One major antecedent of shared understanding development is question asking. This work uses a quasiexperimental study to test the impact of questioning support on different types of distributed teams, both homogeneous and heterogeneous. This extends theoretical insight into the development of shared understanding and contributes one of few empirical studies directly comparing the response characteristics of different team types. From a managerial perspective this work has implications for how distributed NPD teams can be more effectively supported, as well as how shared understanding development can be facilitated in the NPD process.