Exploring new product portfolio management decisions: The role of managers' dispositional traits Regina C. McNally a, ⁎ , Serdar S. Durmusoglu b,1 , Roger J. Calantone a,2 , Nukhet Harmancioglu c,3 a Michigan State University, Eli Broad College of Business, Department of Marketing, N370 North, Business Complex, East Lansing, MI 48824, United States b University of Dayton, School of Business Administration, 300 College Park, Dayton, OH 45469-2271, United States c Bilkent University, Faculty of Business Administration, Bilkent, Ankara, 06800 Turkey Received 8 August 2006; received in revised form 20 July 2007; accepted 22 September 2007 Available online 31 October 2007 Abstract Product strategy links to new product development (NPD) through new product portfolio management (NPPM). This dynamic decision process addresses the strategy implementation questions of identifying which new product ideas to pursue and their relative priorities. Despite the importance of NPPM in implementing product strategy, firms exhibit substantial performance-affecting differences. We investigate one potential source for such differences by examining the impact of managers' dispositional factors as a possible explanation. Using a case study research method, we examine differences in NPPM strategies and managers' revealed dispositional traits across three divisions of a single conglomerate firm operating in different business-to-business markets. Based on our analysis, we offer propositions relating managers' dispositions to NPPM strategy: analytic cognitive style is associated with balance, ambiguity tolerance is associated with strategic fit, and leadership style is associated with the relative weights applied to each dimension. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: New product portfolio management; Managers' dispositions; Case studies; Analytic cognitive style; Ambiguity tolerance; Leadership style 1. Introduction Managing product development, where goods and service solutions that customers need and want are created, is so im- portant in delivering customer value that Srivastava, Shervani, and Fahey (1999) categorize it as one of the three core business processes to which marketing contributes. Despite the impor- tance of managing new product development (NPD), firms still struggle to achieve success in their NPD efforts (Griffin, 1997). Researchers investigating NPD best practices have delineated numerous processes to enhance success likelihood. One popular process is to implement an evaluation system where NPD acti- vities are measured and evaluated on a pre-arranged schedule to assess if the development is proceeding to plan (Crawford, 1986). Evaluation decisions often are referred to as gates and encompass two decisions: first identifying a set of feasible projects by assessing individual projects against hurdles that all projects must clear, then prioritizing the multiple feasible projects to identify which will be developed (Cooper, Edgett, & Kleinschmidt, 1997b). Within such an evaluation process, the pre-development decisions are both critical and difficult. These pre-development evaluation decisions have been referred to as product portfolio selection (McDonough & Spital, 2003) and as new product portfolio management (NPPM). NPPM is the dynamic decision process of evaluating, selecting, prioritizing, and allocating resources to product development projects (Cooper, Edgett, & Kleinschmidt, 2001a). NPPM involves determining resource allocations to maximize the resulting program benefit given a set of alternatives that require common scarce resources (Baker, 1974). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Industrial Marketing Management 38 (2009) 127 – 143 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 517 432 6378; fax: +1 517 432 1112. E-mail addresses: mcnally@bus.msu.edu (R.C. McNally), durmuser@udayton.edu (S.S. Durmusoglu), rogercal@bus.msu.edu (R.J. Calantone), nukheth@bilkent.edu.tr (N. Harmancioglu). 1 Tel.: +1 937 229 3540; fax: +1 937 229 3788. 2 Tel.: +1 517 3536381; fax: +1 517 432 1112. 3 Tel.: +90 312 290 1928; fax: +90 312 266 4958. 0019-8501/$ - see front matter © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.indmarman.2007.09.006