从顾客知识到新产品开发:基于旅游企业组织设计的实证研究

How Customer Knowledge Lead to New Product Development:The Mediating Role of Organizational Design

该研究旨在回答旅游企业如何利用组织设计将顾客知识转化为新产品开发绩效这一问题。研究构建了顾客知识获取、组织设计和新产品开发绩效的结构模型,从组织设计的视角分析旅游企业如何通过组织分权、知识激励和组织沟通三大机制,将外部的顾客知识转化为新产品开发绩效。基于浙江省内127家旅游企业问卷调查的数据,采用结构方程模型的方法,同时考察组织分权、知识激励、组织沟通对顾客知识获取和新产品开发绩效之间关系的中介作用和路径。研究结果强调了组织设计对转化顾客知识提升旅游企业新产品开发绩效的重要性。通过分散决策权、提供知识搜索和知识共享的制度激励、鼓励纵横结合的内部沟通等措施,旅游企业能够更好地将顾客知识转化为新产品和新服务,从而为旅游企业构建系统高效的顾客协同创新体系提供有益的启示。

This study investigated how tourism companies transfer customer knowledge to new product development performance. To answer the research question, this study constructed a theoretical model of customer knowledge acquisition, organizational design and new product development performance. The innovation literature has acknowledged that form can improve their irmovativeness by cooperating with customers for knowledge. Similar arguments have been made in the tourism literature. This study argued that neither literature make sufficient investigation of internal organization design. Specifically, tourism companies that attempt to leverage customer knowledge in the context of new product development must design an appropriate internal organization to support the transferring process from customer knowledge to new products and services. Based on the organization design theory, this study analyzed the transferring process from external customer knowledge to new product development performance by three mechanisms including delegation, knowledge incentives and internal communication. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 127 Zhejiang tourism companies and structural equation models were applied to analyze the survey data. The structural equation models analyzed the mediating role of organizational design including delegation, knowledge incentives and internal communication on the relationship between customer knowledge acquisition and new product development performance. The findings highlighted the importance of organizational design in support of transferring customer knowledge and improving the performance of new product development of tourism companies. Firstly, the greater delegation of decision rights smooths the interactive process with customers and increases the probability that customer knowledge would be brought across the boundaries of the tourism companies. Secondly, the more the tourism companies delegate responsibility, the more they will use knowledge incentives. The companies＇ performance and reward systems focus more on knowledge acquisition and knowledge sharing behaviors. Employees are rewarded for seeking shareable knowledge and sharing knowledge with each other. Thirdly, the intensive vertical and lateral communication enables the dissemination of customer knowledge inside the tourism companies. Close and frequent interactions between different departments and teams lead to superior new product development performance by integrating and coordinating different knowledge. Overall, by delegating decision rights to employees, providing rewards to sharing and acquiring knowledge behavior as well as encouraging intensive vertical and lateral communication, tourism companies are capable of transferring external customer knowledge to their new services. The main contribution of this study is to open the internal organizational design dimension in the context of new product development of tourism companies. It enriches our understanding of the role of organization design in the context of leveraging customer knowledge to improve new product development performance. This study also contributes to the literature on open innovation with customers by exploring how tourism companies use customers＇ knowledge in their innovation process. This study provided some implications for tourism companies to establish effective co-innovation system with their customers. This study was based on survey data which has potential problems common method variance. More studies use different methods are needed to make complementary investigation. Future works could also explore the effects of interaction between customer knowledge searching and internal knowledge sharing on innovation performance.