Research On The Life Cycle Of Cross-Functional Teams And Its Identification

As the development of economy globalization and information technology, the business environment becomes more and more complicated and uncertain. International competition, rapid evolution of information technology and cross-regional cooperation pose as a great challenge towards the structurally bulky and sluggishly reacting company. In this situation, many companies, domestic as well as foreign ones, take on a flexible organization form, namely cross-functional team. Cross-functional team is a between-organization-and-individual organization form consisting of members with different job backgrounds for a certain aim. Usually, its members complement and cooperate with each other in capability or skill, and for their mutual aim, they shoulder certain responsibility, play certain role, perform the same behavior norm.By reviewing the previous researches on team, it is found that most of the researches focus on its construction and output, neglecting its process, which has been proved by practice that the valid functioning process is a key to a team's success. So this paper carries out a series of researches on the functioning process of cross-functional team, namely the life cycle of cross-functional team.Research one explores the characteristics of cross-functional team. By interviewing four cross-functional teams of different kinds, it finds the key factors of cross-functional team, its structure of task, its functioning pattern and the difference between cross-functional team and the work group as well as teams of other forms. Research two concentrates on the rudiment of cross-functional team by a combination of interview and theory study. It primarily gives out the life cycle model of cross-functional team and the cycle's general picture, as well as the obstacles and relative countermeasures in each life phase.Research three demonstrates the key-factor model of life cycle of cross-functional team with a questionnaire investigation. Through three steps of questionnaire composition, try-out test and questionnaire investigation, the original data needed has been collected; meanwhile the reliability and validity of the questionnaire get assured. As regards the analysis of the data, many methods are adopted for building the key-factor model of life cycle of cross-functional team, such as scale analysis, factor analysis, descriptive statistics, relativity analysis, mean analysis and so on. Research four is a quantitatively identification study towards cross-functional team using fuzzy mathematics. Based on the achievement of research three, this part creates a quantitatively identifying method with the key-factors of each phase in life cycle of cross-functional team as identifying index and fuzzy mathematics model as identifying tool.In the end, this paper concludes all the above main achievements, discusses their theoretical and practical meaning, and points out limited places in the content and methods of this research along with the developing direction for further research.