Greater-than, equal-to, or less-than the sum of the parts: A study of collective information processing and information distribution in real-time cross-functional design

Cross-functional teams have emerged as a key organizational mechanism for integrating the expertise of organizational members from different functional specialties. A central premise underlying the use of cross-functional teams is that by integrating functionally diverse expertise, firms can achieve superior problem solving and innovation performance. However, studies of cross-functional projects indicate that while functional diversity contributes to superior product development performance, functional diversity can also impede performance by reducing a team's capacity for teamwork. Despite the critical role that has been attributed to functional diversity in new product development, few empirical studies exist that examine exactly how functional diversity operates to both facilitate and impede team and project performance.; The current research examined the dynamics of functional diversity using an ethnographic case study of a cross-functional team employing real-time concurrent design techniques to develop mission and hardware concepts for a future Mars mission. The study adopted a collective information processing perspective to analyze how the distribution of functional expertise affected individual and team information processing behaviors and outcomes, i.e. the distribution of design rationale information, during the mission design project. The study found that functional expertise predicted information processing behaviors and outcomes when there was a clear match between issues encountered by the team and a represented expert domain. When there was not a clear match between an issue and expert domain, the study found information processing outcomes were positively linked to participation in team problem solving and decision making. The study explains differences in participation in terms of the division of cognitive labor and differences in members' commitment to global (versus engineering and functional) mission goals. Finally, the study draws managerial implications for conceptualizing and managing the trade-off between project partitioning, the division of knowledge, and collaborative work practices in cross-functional design and development.