Vol. 5 Num. 3 - GCG: Revista de Globalización, Competitividad y ...

Product innovation: An empirical study into the impact of simultaneous engineering on new product quality88 Table 1. Response distribution for regionsREGIONS POPULATION POPULATION % RESPONSE RESPONSE % PERCENTAGE %Andalucía 9 7.14 5 11.63 55.55Aragon 8 6.35 5 11.63 62.5Castilla-Leon 1 0.79 0 0 0Catalonia 39 30.95 8 18.60 20.51Galice 4 3.17 1 2.32 25La Rioja 1 0.79 0 0 0Madrid 43 34.13 16 37.21 37.21Murcia 1 0.79 1 2.32 0Navarra 2 1.59 2 4.64 100Basque Country 11 8.73 3 6.98 27.27Valence 7 5.56 2 4.65 28.57TOTAL 126 99.98 43 99.98 34.133.2 Instruments for measuring the variablesThe information gathered from the questionnaires was used to construct a set of indicatorsto represent the variables which were to be measured, using the arithmetic mean for thispurpose.Measuring the new product development teamsIn order to measure this variable, an indicator (TEAM) was constructed, simplifying theinstrument used by Minguela-Rata et al. (2006). Four dimensions were considered for thispurpose: (1) the degree of integration of team members (Wheelwright and Clark, 1992;Katzenbach and Smith, 1993; Edmondson and Nembhard, 2009; Salomo et al., 2010), (2)the characteristics of the project leader (Cooper and Kleinschmidt, 1995; Cooper, 1998;Edmondson and Nembhard, 2009; Paulsen et al., 2009), (3) support from top management(Song et al., 1996, 1997), and (4) the degree of multifunctionality (Teachman, 1980; Pfefferand O’Really, 1987; Ancona and Caldwell, 1992; Edmondson and Nembhard, 2009).While for the first three dimensions a multi-item scale was developed which covered themost relevant aspects and gave them all the same weighting, for the fourth dimension (thedegree of functionality) an index of functional diversity was calculated6 (Teachman, 1980;Pfeffer and O’Really, 1987; Ancona and Caldwell, 1992). To measure this, respondentswere asked to indicate the total number of people making up the team, and then to breakthis number down by functional areas7. As the functional diversity index had values from6. where P represents the fraction of team members assigned to different functional areas. The higher this value, the greater thefunctional diversity within the team. The values obtained for this index range from 0 to 1.89.7. The areas covered in the questionnaire were: Engineering/R+D, marketing, finance, production, customer and/or supplier participation.GCG GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY - UNIVERSIA SEPTIEMBRE-DICIEMBRE 2011 VOL. 5 NUM. 3 ISSN: 1988-7116pp: 80-101