A Narrative Perspective On Controlling New Product Development

Management control in new product development can be viewed as a set of narratives. Narrating and calculating have been conceptualized as two alternative ways of reasoning, learning, and persuading. Combining the narrative perspective with the pragmatic constructivism, this book proposes that controlling new product development requires an integration between narrating and calculating. The empirical research reported in the volume has demonstrated that management control in new product development is a functioning practice if its narrative is inclusive of the intentions of all the actors involved in the project.