Exploring Trajectories of Distributed Development: A Study of Two Danish Manufacturers

While some firms have successfully turned their global operations into a formidable source of competitive advantage, others have failed to do so. A lot depends on which activities are globally distributed and how they are configured and coordinated. Emerging body of literature and practice suggest that not only standardized manufacturing tasks, but also knowledge-intensive and proprietary activities, including research and development (R&D), are increasingly subject to global dispersion. The purpose of this chapter is to explore structural and infrastructural arrangements that take place in industrial firms as they globally disperse their development activities. The study employs qualitative methodology and on the basis of two case studies of Danish firms it highlights the challenges of distributed development as well as how these challenges can be dealt with. The chapter outlines a variety of practices used by the companies in order to achieve control and coordination of distributed development activities. Three propositions are developed to advance our understanding of the continual search for an optimal organizational form for managing distributed development.