This paper examines the relationship between research and development peoples' perceptions of uncertainty in their firm's competitive environment and their patterns of technical communication. Measures of both these attributes of six R&D groups, two in each of three industries, are reported and...

Although <i>product modularity</i> is often advocated as a design strategy in the operations management literature, little is known about how consumers respond to modular products. In this research we undertake several experiments to explore consumer response to modularly upgradeable products in...

This paper examines the relationship between product architecture, supply-chain performance metrics, and supply-chain efficiency. We model the contracting relationship between a supplier and a buyer. The supplier is privately informed about the outcome of his design/production investment. The...

This paper focuses on the connection between product complexity and vertical integration using original empirical evidence from the auto industry. A rich literature has addressed the choice between internal production and external sourcing of components in the auto industry. More recent...

Product architecture and organizational communication play significant roles in complex product development efforts. By using networks to characterize both product structure and communication patterns, we examine the impact of mismatches between these on new product development (NPD)...