New knowledge creation dynamics in multidisciplinary teams: In search of innovation practices

The growing necessity to introduce innovations to markets has made firms more conscious of their conception and consumption of organizational knowledge as the meta-resource with which they compete. The use of multidisciplinary teams, where knowledge resources are brought together from different organizational functions and disciplines has gained tremendous popularity. Multidisciplinary teams are viewed as having high potential to innovate due to their heterogeneous nature. Composing knowledge worlds, expertise and experiences would result in nothing less than innovative outcomes, so the assumption goes. Yet these teams have often fallen short of their potential in practice.;Since the prime purpose of the multidisciplinary composition is to produce new knowledge, these teams rely heavily on their most valuable resource: their heterogeneous knowledge base. Yet this is exactly where unique and unusual team functioning problems arise. For example: (1) How do people from different disciplines bring together their diverse knowledge bases to create novel solutions? (2) How do designated leaders succeed in leading professionals who derive power from their expertise and expect to self-manage and shape the team views and decisions? (3) How do multidisciplinary teams overcome barriers that arise from individuals' multiple commitment to organizational functions and professions?;While the knowledge theory talks about knowledge creation by multidisciplinary teams in disregard from the 'knower' problematic nature, this research provides a dialectic account to describe the concurrent emergence of tensions around commitment, leadership and knowledge sharing in multidisciplinary teams due to their heterogeneous composition. As found, specific tension management mechanisms of boundary management, distributed leadership and helping-based collaboration are better enabling multidisciplinary teams in realizing their innovative potential.;This research contributes to the knowledge theory of the firm by defining the nature of the 'knower' and demonstrating its critical influence on new knowledge generation processes and outcomes. Furthermore, this study challenges the prevailing mono-leader view and proposes that leadership in successful multidisciplinary teams is distributed and shared. Finally the study enriches the group literature by identifying the effect of reputation management via the adoption of specific boundary management strategy on the team's ability to secure resources to better realize its knowledge development potential.