Shared Mental Models and Boundary Management Activities in New Product Development: A Perspective on Multiteam Systems

Multiteam systems (MTSs) have been increasingly adopted as an organizational form to manage large-scale projects. However, new product development (NPD) in the MTSs structure entails challenges with respect to achieving efficiency due to interteam coordination challenges. Shared mental models (SMMs) within a single team have been found to facilitate intrateam coordination; however, further exploration is needed as to whether SMMs within MTSs can improve interteam coordination among component teams and, if so, what mechanisms underlie this. The present article examines the theoretical underpinning of the impacts of SMMs among component team leaders on MTSs’ NPD efficiency, and further considers the impact of external conditions of requirement uncertainty, the most common external situation during NPD. Using survey data from 110 information technology development MTSs and drawing on boundary management perspective, the results reveal that SMMs among component team leaders positively affect NPD efficiency by managing the MTSs boundary, i.e., through boundary entrainment and boundary buffering activities at the system level. In addition, we find that requirement uncertainty plays a vital role in determining the nature of this relationship. Taken together, our findings highlight the importance of the role of SMMs among component team leaders in facilitating NPD efficiency in MTSs settings.