This study is based on the longitudinal survey of inter-project strategies along the development stage of the Korean automobile industry. Major objectives of this study are 1) to examine changes of inter-project strategies along the developmental stage of the automobile industry, and 2) to analyze the relationship between inter-project strategy and performance.
In this study, five inter-project strategies were identified for analysis based on the classification of Nobeoka(1993) such as 1) new design strategy, 2) fast design transfer strategy, 3) sequential design tranafer strategy, 4) design modification strategy and 5) foreign-design imitation strategy.
Data was collected from three major Korean motor companies throughout the case study. In addition, relevant informations on 13 development projects were collected and analyzed in this study.
The major findings of this study are as follows:
1) Firm's inter-project strategies vary along the development stages of industry. As the development stage goes on, the dependancy on the foreign-design imitation strategy has decreased and a portion of new design strategy has increased in new product development.
2) In the generation stage of industrial development, new product introduction rate is negatively correlated with a protion of new design strategy. In the firm level analysis, new product introduction rate is positively related with portions of the fast design transfer strategy or the design modification strategy as well as sales growth rate.
3) The analysis on the relationships between inter-project strategies and lead time as well as development cost show that the fast design transfer strategy is the most efficient rather than other inter-project strategies.
Throughout the survey, four set of hypotheses were generated and managerial implications as well as limitations of this study were described.
This study shows the empirical evidences on the relationships between inter-project strategy and project performance in the developing country. The results of the study could be compared with the results in developed countries and futher comparative studies based on the elaborated models are needed.
