New Product Development, Accounting Information, and Internal Audits: A Proposed Integrative Framework

Innovation activities and processes of an organization have been given considerable attention within the past decade by both managers and academics. The new product development (NPD) process is a critical innovation process that has been explored from different functional perspectives, such as marketing, engineering, finance and manufacturing, due to its interfunctional nature. As new product failure rates continue to remain high, management control systems have become an important issue. While perceptions of the ‘intervention’ of accounting practices in business processes have been widely regarded as unwelcome constraints on innovation (e.g. R&D), the view taken here is that accounting, particularly the tasks of auditing, becomes an integral internal information generating activity that enhances, rather than constrains, the NPD process and ultimately overall NPD team performance. The purpose of this paper is to identify and explain accounting information and accounting audit tasks that are essential for efficient execution of the NPD process. In doing so, a conceptual framework is presented, which integrates accounting information and practices into the NPD process. Moreover, it is argued that the extent to which accounting information is actually utilized as part of the NPD process has an influence on the performance outcomes of the NPD process. Theoretical and practical contributions, as well as suggestions for future research are also discussed.