A meta-analysis of stability and flexibility effects on performance in product development

Product development teams need stability to operate efficiently and flexibility to adjust dynamically. Stability and flexibility have typically been studied in separate literatures of organisational adaptation and design, respectively. The separation of stability-flexibility has led to the two constructs as incompatibles. The current study uses the product development domain to synthesise the disparate literatures. A systematic review resulted in K = 55 analysed studies (N = 11,666). Our findings are three-fold. First, stability and flexibility exhibit a significant positive relationship. Meta-regressions support joint-positive effects with shared-variance (18%) in performance. Second, although structural forms typify stability and flexibility, stronger performance effects are observed for behavioural forms. Third, stability's stronger effect for project (vs. product) performance is evident only by complementary conceptions. That is, structural stability's project effect is strengthened by behavioural flexibility, and vice-a-versa. Conceptual conflation of stability and flexibility obscures the differential performance effects.