Cross-functional teams Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

This research in progress paper investigates new business development in small and medium sized (SME) German
enterprises. Germany is known for its “hidden champions”, little publicly known global market leaders in niches. We
find that they successfully mandate business development teams that engage in close market interaction and develop
the business based on so gathered experience; to which we refer as pivoting. Successful teams are found to enjoy
high levels of autonomy combined with coaching and top management interaction. The paper reports case studies
illustrating four autonomy dimensions that determine new business development (functional autonomy, decision
autonomy, strategic autonomy, and structural autonomy) and each is aligned with specific balancing activities. The
paper contributes to corporate entrepreneurship literature by providing a new conceptual framework of autonomy,
which is a first step for quantifying the effects of autonomy on the performance of business development teams.
Characteristics of the four autonomy dimensions are derived from the cases and their influence on the ability of
teams to develop a new business is revealed. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and
managerial implications.

- by
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- Corporate Entrepreneurship, Corporate Venturing, Autonomy, Cross-functional teams
- by Amir Emami
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- Business, Project Management, New Product Development, Cross-functional teams
- by Soham Pathak
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- Cross-functional teams, Industrial Realtions

At present, the existing literature shows that the factors which influence the effectiveness of virtual teams for new product development are still ambiguous. To address this problem, a research design was developed, which includes detailed literature review, preliminary model and field survey. From literature review, the factors which influence the effectiveness of virtual teams are identified and these factors are modified using a field survey. The relationship between knowledge workers (people), process and technology in virtual teams is explored in this study. The results of the study suggest that technology and process are tightly correlated and need to be considered early in virtual teams. The use of software as a service, web solution, report generator and tracking system should be incorporated for effectiveness virtual teams.

This research in progress paper elucidates the multidimensional phenomenon of autonomy which determines the
success of teams developing a new business in small and medium-sized high-tech firms. In a previous inductive
study we had revealed that this phenomenon is described through four autonomy dimensions: functional autonomy,
decision autonomy, structural autonomy and strategic autonomy. In this paper we operationalize these dimensions on
the basis of empirical findings discussed in literature and integrate the operationalized autonomy dimensions into a
theoretical model. Thereby the paper contributes to theory because autonomy as a multidimensional phenomenon is
not well understood in corporate entrepreneurship and respective models are barely available. In practice, the
challenge is to establish a level of autonomy that enables business development teams to experiment in market
interaction and at the same time enables the supervising manager to keep control over the new business. Our model
describes criteria that facilitate managers to balance the level of autonomy in this manner.

- by Guido H Baltes and +1
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- SME, Corporate Entrepreneurship, Corporate Venturing, Autonomy

Collaboration between marketing and operational areas is critical to business success. Despite
this, in practice most companies suffer hostile and adversarial relationships between these
functions. Existing research has not sufficiently addressed methods for improving this
situation outside of the large corporation or manufacturing sector. This paper seeks to address
this shortcoming, investigating mechanisms to support better cross-functional relationships in
the small-medium-enterprise and in the service sector. Five case studies are presented of
companies that displayed a-typically good relationships between marketing and operations
groups. A cross-comparison is conducted to identify key themes and approaches that provide
for and support good cross-functional relationships. Three key methods are presented and
proposed as sources of positive marketing-operations relationships: (i) manipulation of
pay/reward mechanisms; (ii) clear strategy and strategic leadership; and, (iii) an explicit focus
on bringing people together.

- by Niall Piercy
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- Marketing, Operations Management, Cross-functional teams

Marketing and operations as functional areas constitute the key value adding areas of the
business organisation. It is these areas that are responsible for specifying what is produced,
how it is produced and actually delivering goods and services to customers. Close
collaboration between marketing and operations is vital to ensure effective fulfilment of
organisational aims. In practice, the relationship between these two areas has been marked by
fighting and hostility rather than co-operation or partnership. In this paper, the literature that
has examined this relationship is analysed. From this, six key issues are proposed that have
resulted in the poor working relations seen in practice. These are: conflicting reward systems,
different backgrounds and philosophies, functional separation, politics and resource
allocation, management failure and academic failure. Implications for marketing practice and
future research directions are then identified.

- by Niall Piercy
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- Marketing, Operations Management, Cross-functional teams

The move towards offering product-service systems (PSS) requires the involvement of stakeholders from heterogeneous functions or companies with knowledge of the different stages of the life cycle. This challenges the way in which organizations create, share, and manage knowledge across functional and corporate boundaries. The management and reuse of knowledge within the cross-functional teams are still enormous tasks, especially when dealing with semi- structured or unstructured information, as well as with informal and tacit knowledge.
The purpose is to explore how a lightweight collaborative approach can support knowledge sharing in cross-functional collaboration in the context of product-service system development. Through an empirical analysis of the knowledge management practices within cross-functional collaborative teams in the aerospace supply chain, this thesis describes the knowledge-related problems in light of the implementation of a PSS paradigm and explores how lightweight collaborative technologies can enable knowledge sharing in boundary-crossing collaborative working environments. The study adopts a qualitative research methodology whose empirical findings are based on two industrial case studies. Data have primarily been generated through interviews, focus group meetings, and survey questionnaires.
The research work outlines the limitations of current knowledge management systems in capturing, managing, and reusing cross-functional knowledge in PSS development in terms of knowledge sharing, pointing to lightweight collaborative technologies as a key knowledge-sharing enabler for PSS development. Furthermore, the study elaborates upon the opportunities and challenges embedded in the lightweight concept by using SWOT analysis as well the development of several scenarios in which social, bottom-up technologies are applied in an engineering context. This approach results in the identification of promising areas for the significant impact of PSS development, such as in identifying new product opportunities, locating the right capabilities in the organization, and capturing the design intent and design rationale. These areas eventually highlight the features and requirements for effective lightweight knowledge sharing in PSS development efforts.
The research work introduces Web 2.0/social software applications and methods as a bottom-up and lightweight collaborative approach for knowledge sharing in PSS development. First, the study determines that these technologies can enhance knowledge sharing by providing empowering opportunities and dynamic way of interactions for knowledge workers. Second, these technologies can improve teams’ capabilities by exploiting the network of connections through the collective creation and maintenance of shared knowledge assets with a common understanding. Such improvements will eventually enhance decision making and sense making in a global, virtual, and cross-functional team setting. Finally-and most importantly- these technologies can amplify access to individual tacit knowledge, thereby ensuring continuous organizational learning.
This research work is particularly significant as the adoption of a Web 2.0/social approach in engineering collaboration is still not eminent. The thesis outlines several issues that have to be addressed from both methodological and technological perspectives before pursuing the wide adoption of lightweight tools in the areas identified.

- by Koteshwar Chirumalla
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- Web 2.0, Knowledge Management, Knowledge sharing, Engineering Design
- by Lance Raymond
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- Leadership, Phenomenology, Cross-functional teams, Middle Management

The purpose of this paper is twofold (1) conceptualizing trust emergence at team level and (2) exploring the underlying mechanisms by which trust emerges in cross-functional teams. More precisely, this paper aims at offering an understanding of how trust emerges as a group characteristic in cross-functional teams from experts' perspective. Additionally, this research offers a representation of what the underlying mechanisms of this form of emergence are. By employing a semi-structured interviewing technique, this paper taps into the yet unexplored view of experts (trainers and management consultants) into the patterns of social interaction between members of cross-functional teams. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

- by Catalina D Dumitru
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- Organizational Trust, Cross-functional teams, Teamwork

The risk of New Product Development (NPD) investments is that
they are wasted if users and customers do not accept their results. Living Labs
set out to involve users early on in the process to reduce this risk. The paper
tells the story of how Coliquio discusses the contribution of Living Labs to
NPD. User acceptance is a well-known performance indicator for new product
success and user-involvement an indicator of development process maturity.
As the story suggests, the nature of Living Labs as innovation intermediary is
coordination of NPD processes in open-network settings. The paper provides a
framework of Living Lab capabilities including team mobilisation and idea
scouting, match making, product development, user validation and market
positioning, project financing and venturing for future growth. Their concurrent
coordination is a capability by itself. Living Labs are entrepreneurship
capabilities.

- by Guido H Baltes
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- Entrepreneurship, New Product Development, Open Innovation, Cross-functional teams

Marketing as a function faces a threat of extinction, or an increasingly reduced role in strategic planning unless marketing executives find ways to be accountable, show their influence on innovations, and lead in customer connectedness (Brown, 2005; O‘Sullivan & Abella, 2007; Stewart, 2006; Verhoef & Leeflang, 2009, 2010). Scholars interested in defining metrics for marketing performance argued for further research that identifies non-financial metrics to measure marketing performance (O‘Sullivan & Abella, 2007, 2010). ―Over the past three decades marketing academics have raised their concern with the decreased influence of marketing at the level of corporate strategy‖ according to Nath and Mahajan (2008, p. 65). A decrease in the marketing department influence however seems to go beyond corporate strategy, including having an effect on the level of credibility and respect marketing receives in the organization, and in assessments of its performance (Rust, Ambler, Carpenter, Kumar, & Srivastava, 2004; Verhoef & Leeflang, 2009)

- by Dr. Luis De La Cruz
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- Marketing, Leadership, Customer Satisfaction, Cross-functional teams
- by Lance Raymond
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- Cross-functional teams, Middle Management, Program Management, Team Leadership
- by Alexander E Ellinger and +1
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- Marketing, Operations Management, Strategic Marketing, Cross-functional teams

"The sub-process of selecting team members, as in people not organisations, is not applied. It is however a fact that interconnections and boundaries are formed between individuals within a team and teams as a whole within the project and... more

- by Dimitris Antoniadis
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- Management, Engineering, Psychology, Design

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. lost intolerable numbers of aircraft to the pervasive threat of radar detection and antiaircraft missilery. Striving to regain air supremacy, the Pentagon held a secret competition to build an aircraft that could trump the Soviet’s embattlements. At the time, the aerospace defense industry included five major players: McDonnell Douglas, Rockwell, Hughes Aircraft Company, Northrop, and Lockheed. Each firm boasted an impressive track record of military innovation, but only Lockheed had a Skunk Works, an autonomous rapid-prototyping shop staffed with a cross-functional team of the most talented individuals from across the organization. Although insulated from the affairs of the parent corporation, the Skunk Works faced challenges regarding cost, quality, security, and mandatory compliance with government requirements. In the end, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works won the Pentagon contract with its revolutionary subsonic night fighter, the F-117A Nighthawk. What key elements of the skunk works organization structure made Lockheed Martin successful when all others had failed? What is it about Lockheed’s winning skunk works formula that provides the right mix of managerial support and autonomy to create a nurturing entrepreneurial environment?

- by Nikolaus Butz
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- Military History, Organizational Theory, Management of Innovation, Aviation

Virtual team management is the ability to organize and coordinate with effect a group whose members are not in the same location or time zone, and may not even work for the organization. The predictor of success is-as always-clarity of purpose. But group participation in achieving that is more than ever important to compensate for lost context. Virtual team management requires deeper understanding of people, process, and technology, and recognition that trust is a more limiting factor compared with face-to-face interactions.

- by Olivier Serrat
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- Knowledge Management, Trust, Collaboration, Virtual Teams

Most studies of new product development practices focus on comparisons of individual projects, to identify factors contributing to their success or failure. This paper builds on an in-depth field study of the interaction of one single NPD project with the organizational context of the firm. The project typified many recommended practices for new-design projects: a co-located, cross-functional project team, close collaboration with external system suppliers, a hard-driving project manager and strong top management support. However, when evaluated in their organizational context as to their consequences for other on-going projects, these attributes turned out to have a deeply ambivalent character. By combining results from the case study and evidence from the literature several implications for NPD-organizing are suggested: the value of alternating co-location and physical separation according to the requirements of specific project phases; to take project duration into account in location decisions; and to address both interaction within the project and mechanisms for its interaction and integration with other departments and projects.

Integration of organisational units has been extensively researched in various streams of management and organization sciences. It is very important whenever knowledge differences have to be overcome due to functional departmentalisation and the ensuing knowledge specialisation. However, extant literature does not yet appreciate the mediating role of absorptive capacity (AC) in this context. We argue that departments use integration mechanisms in order to develop and maintain such an organisational capability to absorb knowledge from other departments, so that integration can succeed to increase innovation performance. Our unique dataset of Italian manufacturing firms from various industries allows us to study this in the context of the integration of research and development (R&D) and marketing and sales (M&S) departments. Thereby, we provide empirical evidence on the mediating role of AC. We find evidence that R&D departments build AC via formal cross-functional integration, while M&S departments do so through informal integration. Moreover, we provide evidence of AC’s mediating role for the relationship between cross-functional integration mechanisms and innovation performance. Our findings also reveal significant differences between R&D and M&S functions in terms of effect sizes and significance levels. AC of R&D departments has a significant and substantial effect on innovation performance and thus effectively acts as a mediating variable, while in case of M&S departments we observe a significant direct effect between formal cross-functional integration and innovation performance without any mediation by AC.

- by Johann Piet Hausberg and +1
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- Management of Innovation, Innovation and Knowledge Managemnt, Integration of Knowledge, Cross-functional teams

"In product development, innovation means bringing together people with different expertise to develop breakthrough product and service offers. In spite of their potential, cross-functional efforts are not yet adequately supported from a knowledge perspective, asking for a more open and bottom-up approach for knowledge management. The paper aims to investigate how social technologies can enhance collaboration and knowledge sharing in complex, cross-functional and cross-organizational product development projects, highlighting the role of weak ties as enablers
for more innovative design processes. Emerging from data collected in two case studies within the European aeronautical industry, it applies the Strengths- Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) framework
to highlight how wikis, blogs, forum or microblogs can shorten lead-time and increase the quality of early design decisions. Furthermore, it elaborates on how the design team can enhance its perception of the needs to be addressed and leverage its capability to develop solutions for the task at hand."

- by Koteshwar Chirumalla
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- Web 2.0, Knowledge Management, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media

Problem statement: Although, literature proves the importance of the technology role in the effectiveness of virtual Research and Development (R&D) teams for new product development. However, the factors that make technology construct in a virtual R&D team are still ambiguous. The manager of virtual R&D teams for new product development does not know which type of technology should be used. Approach: To address the gap and answer the question, the study presents a set of factors that make a technology construct. The proposed construct modified by finding of the field survey (N = 240). We empirically examine the relationship between construct and its factors by employing the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). A measurement model built base on the 19 preliminary factors that extracted from literature review. The result shows 10 factors out of 19 factors maintaining to make technology construct. Results: These 10 technology factors can be grouped into two constructs namely Web base communication and Web base data sharing. The findings can help new product development managers of enterprises to concentrate in the main factors for leading an effective virtual R&D team. In addition, it provides a guideline for software developers as well. Conclusion: The second and third generation technologies are now more suitable for developing new products through virtual R&D teams.

- by Simon Clatworthy
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- Service Design, Cross-functional teams, New service development, Touch-points

- by Marco Bertoni
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- Business, Computer Science, Knowledge Management, Project Management

This paper contributes to our understanding of knowledge creation by developing a comprehensive model of the knowledge creating process in organisational work teams. It subsequently synthesises contemporary theory across research streams to develop hypotheses relating to three factors capable of facilitating the knowledge development process-cognitive diversity, transactional memory and open-mindedness norms. In combination, the conceptual rationale and empirical support act to substantiate three key relationships in the knowledge creation process.

- by Stephen Nicholas
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- Psychology, Computer Science, Group Dynamics, Transactional Memory

This paper reviews one of the central areas of service design, the area of touch-point innovation. Specifically, it describes the development and use of a card-based toolkit developed in the AT-ONE project - the AT-ONE touch-point cards. These cards have been developed to assist cross-functional teams during the first phases of the New Service Development (NSD) process. This paper describes and analyses the development of the tools, their intended use and their evaluation following actual uptake by several commercial service providers. The results show that the toolkit assists the innovation process during the first phases of the new service development process and helps develop team cohesiveness. The card-based approach offers a tangibility that teams find useful, and that offers multiple usage alternatives. In addition, the paper describes the multiple functions that tools used in service innovation need to accommodate, and how design makes an important contribution to this. The w...

- by Simon Clatworthy
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- Design, Service Design, Design Research, Design Innovation
- by Guido H Baltes
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- SME, Corporate Entrepreneurship, Corporate Venturing, Autonomy

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into cross-functional team (CFT) members’ points of view on knowledge integration. Design/methodology/approach This study was conducted using Q methodology. The 22 respondents were members of CFTs in information systems development within 7 agencies of the Flemish Government administration. Findings The study resulted in three distinct perspectives. To the CFT player, the benefits and added value of information and knowledge diversity of CFTs outweigh the challenges of knowledge integration. By contrast, the CFT sceptic is doubtful that knowledge integration in CFTs can ever work at all. Finally, the organization critic highlights the lack of support from the organization for efficient and effective knowledge integration in CFTs. Research limitations/implications The findings of this study suggest that CFT configurations have important implications for the development of shared team mental models and for teams’ cognitive perfo...

Tactical planning is implemented to balance customer demand and supply capacity within a medium-term and to avoid under- and overcapacity. In engineer-to-order (ETO) environments, under- and overcapacity lead firms to incur substantial costs that can easily wipe out profit margins. ETO-oriented markets like the construction and capital goods sectors are massive in terms of investments and have considerable impact on the gross domestic product (GDP) of nations. This makes demand-supply (DS) balancing highly important in ETO contexts. The purpose of the thesis is to expand the knowledge about how tactical planning contributes to balancing customer demand and supply capacity in ETO settings. This purpose departed from accepting that – based on extent literature – such knowledge about tactical planning is rather generic and fragmented, which calls for further research. The results in the thesis are presented from literature studies, two single case studies and a multiple case study. Since DS balancing in principle means dealing with the complexity stemming from demand and supply, the thesis results focus on how tactical planning manages such complexity in ETO environments. A single case study, focusing on tactical-level planning activities, together with a multiple case study, focusing on cross-functional integration, address how informal tactical-level planning processes contribute to DS balancing. Including a single case study, focusing on S&OP as a formal tactical-level planning process, the three studies form the empirical base of a framework that responds to the purpose of the thesis. The framework considers complexity, which is represented by two dimensions including detail and uncertainty. The thesis contributes to practical aspects by providing guidance to tactical-level planners in ETO environments concerning the areas of improvement to consider when configuring and upgrading the planning process to manage complexity. The theoretical contribution of the thesis is concerned with the developed framework that describes the relation between tactical planning, DS balancing, cross-functional integration and complexity in ETO settings.

- by Hafez Shurrab
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- Supply Chain Management, Decision Making, Operations Management, Decision Sciences

The purpose of this research paper is to prove the viability of "Business meets Arts" strategy in training and assessing transferable skills in business education. A longitudinal research over a 2-year timeframe including an analysis of focus groups, interviews, descriptive research in transferrable skills subjects for the participants coincided with a theoretical analysis of art-based approaches. Major findings demonstrate "Business meets Arts" strategy having a great impact on transferrable skill training and application, ascertained by study participants, professors and peers. Continuous involvement in arts based projects helps students achieve an understanding of real-life application of the in-class material. Research limitations-small number of research subjects, compared to the overall number of students; a rather small period over which the concept has existed and been employed. Future researches can encompass a longer period, higher number of research participants and a third party such as potential employers. In practice, research findings can be used to motivate education personnel to participate in Business meets Arts projects and incorporate them in their study courses. The research can also boost the image of the institution and establish a competitive edge for employing "Business Meets Arts" strategy in the education process. The current research paper addresses the viability of the strategy, which has not been analysed in practice, therefore would be interesting to the management as well as to potential employers ascertaining a higher professional value of the institution graduates.

Over the past half-decade, research has consistently highlighted the need to improve crossfunctional
relationships and integration between the demand- (DS) and supply- (SS) sides of
organizations. Yet, in practice, firms have made little progress towards more effectively
integrating these diverse functional areas with friction between customer-facing and
operations/supply functions often resulting in sub-optimal business performance. Extant
cross-functional relationship research is variously criticised for failing to capture interaction
between the demand and supply sides of the organization in an integrative manner, for
focusing on the content of interaction but over-looking how exchanges take place, for taking a
simplistic view of cross-functional relationships as being dichotomously good or bad, and for
lacking a solid theoretical foundation. To address these shortcomings, this paper draws on
disconfirmation theory to propose a conceptual framework that captures the process and
content of interactions between DS and SS functional area representatives. To facilitate a
better understanding of complex and dynamic cross-functional relational exchanges,
prescriptions for testing the associated study propositions and directions for future research
are also presented.

- by Niall Piercy
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- Marketing, Operations Management, Cross-functional teams, Cross-functionality