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The central messages of the article are threefold. First, a summary of research testing the perception that cross‐functional organization designs provide key advantages and differentiators for firms in today's hypercompetitive business climate. Second, includes a multifaceted “body of evidence” (e.g. multiple data sources, a range of industries, and various levels of management). Third, pragmatic recommendations regarding how to advance elusive cross‐functional organization design constructs, which today's executives are increasingly seeking to implement.

The article addresses several key questions – are organizations today more like cross‐functional “symphonies” or do they still resemble the traditional, functional, manufacturing model? Are cross‐functional organizations really more effective than functional organizations? And, if cross‐functional organizations are more effective, why aren't they more prevalent? To answer these questions, information from three key sources was assembled to test a body of evidence: first, a Business Schools Programs Review: a comparison of “functional” versus “cross‐functional” business school programs, that included 61 schools offering Masters of Business Administration degrees, located across the USA; second, a scan of the business literature available from five key online sources; and third, a management survey that included 212 total respondents from 37 different industries.

The evidence presented supports five key conclusions: “Functionality” is still the prevailing organization design. Business schools are not functionally focused, but corporate training is. Functionality dominates the management literature. More managers manage functionally. Cross‐functional organizations appear to have several performance advantages over functional organizations.

The key limitation of the current research, and implication for future research, is that cross‐functional and functional organizational financial performance comparisons were not conducted. Financial performance comparisons should be addressed by future research.

The article provides a set of 12 pragmatic recommendations regarding how to implement cross‐functional organization design structures.

The content of the article is useful to executives and managers for several reasons, including: pragmatic recommendations regarding how to implement cross‐functional organization design structures, which today's executives are increasingly seeking to employ. Multifaceted evidence highlighting the differences between functional and cross‐functional structures. Research confirming the assumption that cross‐functional organization designs provide a key differentiator for firms in today's hypercompetitive business climate. Broad application to companies across multiple industries. An overview of available organization design literature and case examples.

Green supply chain management is an effective, environment-friendly business practice. Based on institutional theory and dynamic capability theory, the study examines the effect of institutional pressures to implement green supply chain management (GSCM) on green innovation, by considering the mediation effects of cross-functional coopetition.

This study conducted a survey of Chinese companies and collected 1,481 responses. The effects of institutional pressures for GSCM implementation were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

This study finds that coercive pressure, normative pressure and mimetic pressure for GSCM implementation are sufficient conditions to promote green innovation. Normative and mimetic pressures have significant positive effects on cross-functional coopetition. Cross-functional coopetition not only mediates the relationship between normative pressure and mimetic pressure and green innovation but also represents a necessary condition for it to occur.

First, managers should comprehend environmental regulations, embrace social norms on the environment and focus on competitors' successful GSCM practices. Second, management can organize training and establish performance-based rewards for enhancing a cross-functional coopetitive mindset to effectively respond to institutional pressures. Third, companies should establish multi-functional groups and informal networking via social events to motivate interaction, knowledge sharing and creative tension to achieve green innovation.

This paper expands the application of institutional theory to investigate the antecedent effects of institutional pressures on cross-functional coopetition. In addition, the study deepens understanding of dynamic capability theory in analyzing dynamic processes of cross-functional coopetition based on three dimensions of sensing, seizing and reconfiguring and empirically examines its mediating effects on institutional pressures and green innovation.

Organizations increasingly rely on cross-functional teams to deal with supply chain (SC) disruptions. These teams may use their broad range of connections and expertise to gather or scout relevant information, enabling them to develop integrative countermeasures and increase their organization’s resilience. Despite their potential, cross-functional teams often struggle to attain information scouting’s prospective benefits for effectively resolving disruptions. By drawing from group information-processing theory, this study aims to explore when and how cross-functional teams can realize information scouting’s full potential for ensuring their organization’s resilience.

Multisource, multi-informant data were collected from 80 cross-functional teams exposed to SC disruptions in a realistic SC management simulation.

The results show that a cross-functional team’s ability to effectively use information scouting for ensuring its organization’s resilience is contingent upon the degree to which the team’s members share information and align decisions internally (i.e. internal integration). The findings further reveal that this moderating role of internal integration is strengthened when the cross-functional team faces a volatile environment in which multiple SC disruptions are likely to occur (i.e. higher SC vulnerability).

This study contributes by advancing a more complete perspective on how a cross-functional team may contribute to its organization’s resilience. Specifically, the present research reveals how the benefits of a cross-functional team’s information scouting for dealing with SC disruptions are critically dependent upon internal conditions within the team, as well as external conditions related to its organization’s overall SC (i.e. beyond individual dyadic relationships).

Structural and technological changes are driving functional reorganization in many organizations. To date, there are very few articles that explicitly, consistently and cumulatively focus on cross-functional integration. This paper aims to review and explore the literature that does directly address cross-functional integration.

The authors conducted a literature review within the general management domain for the time frame 2010 to 2020 and identified 71 relevant articles that provide an overview of current practices and trends.

This conceptual paper reviews this identified literature and outlines key trends, noteworthy articles and a summary of relevant theories, and provides an overview of outcomes linked to cross-functional integration in the literature. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for practitioners and an outline of potential research areas for academic researchers, including a call for more theory integration, building and testing in the area of cross-functionality.

This paper is the first of its kind to attempt to summarize the literature on cross-functionality (published between 2010 and 2020), a currently very fragmented field of study spread out across different management disciplines.

This paper outlines a theoretical framework for studying the integration of ethnically diverse workforces in public service organizations. Individual and work group characteristics are viewed as determinants of social identity and organizational identification. Social Identity theory suggests that individuals develop self‐concept through identification with salient groups, including ethnic groups and organizational roles. The extent to which these identifications are competitive or synergistic may depend upon organizational and work group characteristics and on organizational policies concerning selection, performance appraisal, and rewards. Cross‐functional teamwork may provide an integrative mechanism which can promote intergroup relations and encourage greater organizational commitment among an ethnically diverse workforce. Cross‐functional teams can contribute to reduced intergroup conflict and promote the development of organizational identification. The benefits of cross‐functional teams will be particularly important in situations where the workforce is diverse, but work groups are ethnically homogeneous.

Organizations are increasingly using cross‐ functional teams to address broad‐scale organizational problems, and the potential of such teams is undeniable. Bringing a cross‐functional perspective to organizational problems help build understanding, problem‐solving capabilities, co‐ordination, communication and, ultimately, improved quality and productivity. While the benefits are many, this study highlights the challenges. Over one‐half of the participants viewed their cross‐functional team’s work as unsuccessful, and these same individuals felt less optimistic about cross‐functional teams than they had before participating in one. While it is apparent that organizational leaders, are enthusiastically embracing team efforts, calls for additional analysis to explore the unique challenges of cross‐functional teams so organizations can consistently benefit from their efforts. Examines those factors that contributed to the success of the teams in this study and offers recommendations for working with cross‐functional teams.

Although coopetition has been studied for decades, most prior studies shed light on interfirm coopetition across firms instead of intrafirm coopetition across functional departments within a firm. To fill the research gaps, this study aims to investigate the differential effects of cross-functional coopetition on both product and service innovations and the moderating roles of environmental turbulence.

This study surveyed both senior and middle managers from 149 pharmaceutical firms in China.

This study discovers the opposite relationships of cross-functional coopetition on product and service innovations such that cross-functional coopetition enhances product innovation but hurts service innovation. Furthermore, market turbulence attenuates the positive effect on product innovation but strengthens the negative effect on service innovation. However, technological turbulence attenuates the negative impact of cross-functional coopetition on service innovation.

The effects of cross-functional coopetition have been ignored in the innovation literature. By identifying the double-edged sword of cross-functional coopetition, this study contributes to the literature by providing new insights into the differential effects of cross-functional coopetition on product and service innovations.

This study aims to investigate the impact of cross-functional coordination (cross-functional system, process and team coordination) on customer coordination (customer strategic and operational coordination) and operational performance. Following the lens of information processing theory (IPT), this study examines the diverse mechanisms of cross-functional coordination practices in enhancing firms’ information processing capabilities (IPCs) to cope with the higher information processing demands resulting from customer coordination, finally improving operational performance.

Based on data collected from 410 Chinese manufacturers, the authors use the structural equation modeling method to test the theoretical model.

The authors found that cross-functional system coordination is positively associated with customer operational coordination (COC) but not customer strategic coordination (CSC). Cross-functional process coordination increases both customer strategic and operational coordination. Cross-functional team coordination significantly promotes CSC but not COC. Both customer operational and strategic coordination facilitate operational performance.

This research pioneers in identifying three dimensions of cross-functional coordination based on IPT and examine their distinct impacts on various customer coordination activities. The authors distinguish two customer coordination dimensions and reveal their effects on operational performance. This research contributes to the development of IPT. Additionally, this study provides guidelines for managers to coordinate internal departments and collaborate with external customers to enhance firms’ operational performance.

The purpose of this paper is to characterize the cross-functional integration processes between marketing and logistics, while considering five basic elements: boundary spanning activities, integration factors, level of integration, formality/informality and impacts of integration.

After an extensive literature review, five case studies were performed and in-depth interviews conducted. Both within-case and cross-case analysis was performed to better understand the cross-functional integration processes between marketing and logistics.

A characterization of cross-functional integration in the form of a managerial framework was proposed. This framework presents the elements in a process view, instead of disconnected parts of the integration processes. The framework and process perspective helps to explain the integration process, the roles and impacts of integration within organizations, while considering cultural formality and informality.

Qualitative data collection and analysis methods cannot achieve amplitude with respect to sampling nor generalize results. In spite of this, the implications revealed by the propositions may be applied not only to Brazilian companies, but organizations in other countries as well, due to the high level of heterogeneity of the sample, and the fact that they represent multinational organizations. Therefore, further research using broad-based survey data could test the correlations between the elements of cross-functional integration processes.

The identification of the cross-functional integration processes within organizations can help managers to facilitate the efforts of integration between marketing and logistics, reducing conflicts and improving business performance.

Case studies focussing specifically on five Brazilian organizations help provide evidence for an initial definition of cross-functional integration processes by analyzing five key elements according to their characteristics and respective roles. This research provides a strong foundation for future broad-based survey research.

Well‐documented corporate demands for crossfunctionally competent employees have instigated a wide variety of efforts by the educational community to integrate business curricula. Many colleges and universities struggle to functionally integrate business programs that historically have been delivered by well‐defined, and often well‐siloed, disciplines. Drawing from the numerous published and unpublished case studies of cross‐functional integration attempts, this study develops a framework of critical issues to consider when developing an integrated program. The framework develops five major categories of issues (strategic, leadership, administrative, faculty, and student) to help universities identify typical program decisions and potential roadblocks that may inhibit the development of a successful program.