An exploratory study was conducted to examine management control issues in new product development(NPD). The study focused on three management control aspects that NPD managers considered important:(1) position of NPD in the firm's organizational structure; (2) NPD process; and (3) NPD performancemeasures. Primary data were collected from NPD managers via interviews, workshops, and aquestionnaire. For each management-control aspect studied, we examined current practice, recentchanges, and how the control links to strategy. The NPD function reported fairly high in the organization.The need to integrate NPD and strategy encouraged higher reporting levels, and shifts in reporting fromengineering to marketing. The need to integrate NPD and strategy also drove the addition of NPD/strategysteps into already well-defined, phased NPD processes. However, NPD/strategy integration was not wellreflected in performance measures. The firms studied used varied financial and nonfinancial performancemeasures, yet relatively few firms reported that their performance measures reflected key aspects of theirstrategies. NPD managers generally expressed dissatisfaction with the performance measurements, andfirms appeared to be searching for more effective alternatives.