When IT leveraging competence meets uncertainty and complexity with social capital in new product development

We examine how the aspects of IT leveraging competence [i.e., the effective uses of project and resource management systems (PRMS), organizational memory systems (OMS), and cooperative work systems (CWS)] and the social capital (SOCI) influence the performance [i.e., product effectiveness (PDT) and process efficiency (PCS)] by the coordination capability (COOR) and absorptive capacity (ACAP) under the uncertainty and complexity in the new product development (NPD). We find the IT leveraging competence positively affects COOR and ACAP, the links of SOCI-COOR, SOCI-ACAP, COOR-PCS, and ACAP-PDT are positive, neither uncertainty nor complexity has the moderating effect on the COOR-PCS link, the uncertainty negatively moderates the ACAPPDT link, but the complexity has no moderating effect on this link. Our findings reveal why the NPD teams may have difficulty achieving high levels of performance and why these teams may vary in their ability to create the value from their COOR and ACAP.