Introduction

Abstract

The essence of the new product development (NPD) process and the focus of much NPD literature are the project teams (as referred to crossfunctional project teams, multifunctional teams, or NPD project teams). Although project teams have become increasingly popular in practice in high-technology sectors, introducing teamwork and teambased activities into an organisation is a complex process which involves multifunctional, interactive processes that are frequently complicated to control and difficult to appropriately align with incentives. Positivist agency theory, at an economic level, and stewardship theory, from a sociological viewpoint, are utilised in this study to explain the control systems that diminish the agency problem. Also, social identity theory and self-categorisation theory are employed, from psychological and sociological perspectives, to clarify the cognitive, evaluative and emotional processes that motivate individuals to unite cohesive teams and augment their ability to contribute to their teams, which would be required for many team tasks.