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The purpose of this paper is to develop a model to predict the antecedents of the integration level among marketing, logistics and production, considering the influence of formal and informal factors that generate integration and the existence of conflicts.

A survey of 179 participants from all regions of Brazil was conducted. A parsimonious model including four dimensions and 34 variables was developed through confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

The field data corroborate studies dealing with the impact of various formal and informal integration factors on the cross-functional integration level as a construct. Furthermore, this paper concludes that the level of cross-functional can be defined as: the intensity of the relationship among internal functions which can be measured by the mutual existence of formal and informal factors and the absence of manifest conflicts.

The findings of this paper cannot be generalized because of the convenience sampling. Future research could apply a probabilistic sampling and try to explore other geographical settings in both national and international contexts.

The proposed model can generate important information for managers by pointing out variables that can predict the integration level and their impacts on the organizational performance. The paper concludes with examples about how the model could be useful in several practical situations.

This paper proposes a model with reasonable accuracy to predict the integration level and overcomes prior research limitations with respect to models to predict the antecedents of the integration level, particularly the role of conflicts in the integration processes.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the processes of interconnectedness in cross-functional relationships involved in customer value enabling.

In total, 20 in-depth interviews were conducted in three Brazilian companies from different industries. The critical incident technique was used for data collection and analysis. Content analysis was used to characterize the critical incidents within functional area networks.

Six main critical incidents were identified within the studied relationships: process, urgency, lack of trust, capacity and demand imbalance, motivation and challenge. The results show situations in which the collaborative behavior of the actors generates customer value facilitation.

The firms studied are small and medium, located in an emerging economy and are resource-constrained. Further research could be performed in organizations in other countries with different sizes and resources. Future studies could also include customers within the analyzed functional networks to evaluate value-in-use behavior.

Process, as a critical incident, may be composed of several elements that could affect the processes of value creation. Moreover, the adjustment between production capacity and demand should focus on avoiding propagation of functional problems through the processes. This focus may facilitate spontaneous community behavior and customer knowledge renewal.

This paper generates new qualitative bases to characterize the interconnectedness within functional networks within the perspective of relationship marketing. The study of the internal functions and processes revealed several particularities that are not evidenced in the extant literature, which is concentrated in relationships among companies. The quality of the relationship among the members of a functional network may affect the effectiveness of the promises of customer value, more specifically in value enabling.

The objective of this study is to analyze how cross-functional integration contributes to the development of market-oriented strategies in the context of food and beverage manufacturers in Latin America.

A multi-case study was conducted in two multinational companies in Costa Rica and Brazil. Twenty-four semi-structured interviews were carried out with managers, leaders and supervisors.

The results showed four market-oriented processes: product launch, product delivery, customer complaints solution and improvement and innovation projects. Within these processes, 12 integration factors that impact market orientation were characterized. They also indicate that the concepts of market orientation and cross-functional integration should be integrated in the organizational culture to facilitate the understanding of the different needs and levels of urgency.

The studied literature does not emphasize the way integration is operationalized to allow organizations to be market oriented. According to our findings, responsive strategies depend on the integration of various internal functions to generate market intelligence. Managers must realize that when the workers are motivated and informed, they become more willing to take on a group vision and commit to organizational goals. This paper presents seven propositions on the operationalization of market orientation through cross-functional integration.

The purpose of this paper is to characterize the internal dynamics of cross-functional teams (CFTs) in different organizational processes in a service company.

A case study from a Brazilian service company was conducted. CFTs in five different organizational processes (strategy development, product development, portfolio management, sales channels management and business analysis) were analyzed through in-depth interviews, documents and non-participant observation.

A framework with four pillars was constructed: constitution of the CFT, task drivers, behavior and attitudes of the team and personal motivators. It was possible to analyze the process of how a group acts and reacts under changing circumstances based on the pillars included in the framework.

The study is focused on creating analytical generalizability. Several insights in the 12 propositions presented in this study may be investigated in future research to validate the identified relationships among the pillars included in the framework. Moreover, the proposed framework allows the teams to be analyzed through a multidimensional view: structure, processes and impacts.

If the semantic boundaries of the communication are not well delineated, the differences in understanding can generate manifest conflicts. Moreover, the workload in a CFT seems to be larger and more complex than working in a functional activity; however, members perceive that it reduces the risk of unemployment and increases motivation.

The present study contributes to the extant literature with the proposal of a set of new exploratory propositions that can support future quantitative research about the use of CFTs in the service industry context.

The aim of this paper is to characterize how innovation may happen through cross-functional teams (CFT) in an organization of the public sector.

A case study helped to characterize several behavior patterns, team structures and respective links with generating innovation in internal processes and public answering contexts.

The results highlight that formal-temporary teams present a higher capacity to generate incremental innovation in products, whereas permanent-informal teams have a higher capacity to generate innovation in the internal processes and public answering contexts.

The limitations of this research relate to the fact that this is a single case study, and although it is an important case to examine innovation and CFTs, by its very nature, it is not possible to extend and generalize the obtained data to other organizations. The evaluation of its propositions was merely qualitative, and future research is needed to validate its characteristics.

Several settings of CFTs are presented, as well as their ability to generate different types of innovation, such as the computerization of documents, petitions and papers, which decreases the time to answer the taxpayer. Moreover, CFTs can help to create products, such as computer programs that can be used not only locally but also in several public organizations related to tax management.

The field research provides the perceptions of the respondents regarding CFT characteristics that can lead to specific types of innovation, as well as the types of products or services that can be generated by these processes.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how cross-functional integration supports the execution of the demand-side processes and its effects on both the demand and supply-side processes.

A case study was conducted including a Brazilian multinational manufacturer in the automobile industry and some of its suppliers and dealers. 17 interviews were conducted. A theoretical framework is proposed containing five basic elements, they are: characteristics of the demand/supply processes; involved functions; integration factors; context influencers and impacts of integration on demand and supply processes.

The findings present three demand-side processes (Product Launch, Marketing and Sales and Demand Planning) that demonstrated a greater need for cross-functional integration in the studied case, mainly through informal integration factors.

The empirical results of this study have methodological limitations due to the use of the case study method. Future research should analyze the effects of other context influencers (e.g. natural catastrophes, civil wars and low level of unemployment) on cross-functional integration.

The results highlight that joint planning, willingness to work together, team spirit, adequate communication and cross-functional meetings helped the studied organizations to achieve competitive advantages and improve their performance.

This study provides a theoretical framework that helped to improve the understanding of the interrelationships between demand management constructs and cross-functional integration factors. There are indications that a political–economic crisis has stimulated the existence of a willingness to work together and group spirit among employees who remain in the organization after mass dismissals. This climate of cooperation helped to increase the agility and resilience of the studied supply chain, which is currently affected by a changing market.

The present paper aims to demonstrate the potential of integration between industrial robotics and Lean Manufacturing (LM) approach to increase the efficiency of an assembly line.

Based on a case study performed in an Italian company, this paper reports a comparative analysis of the results produced on a line balancing study involving a semi-automated production line, aided by an industrial robot.

The results suggest the possibility of implementing industrial robotics in line balancing studies highlighting efficiency gains and idle reduction. Further, it also addresses some concepts directly related to industry 4.0, such as collaborative robotics, artificial intelligence, and lean automation.

Line balancing studies may include advanced robotics in order to extend traditional lean practices toward Digital LM.

This study adds contributions to the operational excellence literature, demonstrating the symbiosis between industrial robotics and LM practices.

The traditional Shewhart control chart, the X-bar and R/S chart, cannot give support to decide when it is not economically feasible to stop the process in order to remove special causes. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose a new control chart design – a modified acceptance control chart, which provides a supportive method for decision making in economic terms, especially when the process has high capability indices.

The authors made a modeling expectation average run length (ARL), which incorporates the probability density function of the sampling distribution of C_pk, to compare and analyze the efficiency of the proposed design.

This study suggested a new procedure to calculate the control limits (CL) of the X-bar chart, which allows economic decisions about the process to be made. By introducing a permissible average variation and defining three regions for statistical CL in the traditional X-bar control chart, a new design is proposed.

A framework is presented to help practitioners in the use of the proposed control chart. Two new parameters (C_p and C_pk) in addition to m and n were introduced in the expected ARL equation. The C_pk is a random variable and its probability function is known. Therefore, by using a preliminary sample of a process under control, the authors can test whether the process is capable or not.

The purpose of this study is to analyze cross-functional integration processes and their respective impacts on resilience capabilities, with particular emphasis on collaboration, in an automotive supply chain.

A case study was conducted in an automotive supply chain through 18 in-depth interviews with managers from six different companies, namely, two suppliers, one focal manufacturer and three customers. The automotive industry is one of the most vital industries in the Brazilian economy and is still recovering from the 2015 financial crisis, making it an interesting case for this research.

The findings reveal several links between resilience and cross-functional integration literatures through the analysis of three basic categories, namely, disruptions (lack of product, interruption of production, delivery delay, organizational bankruptcy and sales loss); capabilities (redundancy, flexibility, adaptability, collaboration, visibility and agility); and integration factors (cross-functional meetings, adequate communication, longevity of relationships, cross-functional training, recognition of interdependence and the consideration given to informal groups).

This research addresses several implications for practitioners. Managers should pay attention to the cross-functional teams, which may provide internal collaboration, and hence collaboration in the supply chain.

This paper suggests a new concept for the collaboration capability. According to the results, collaboration is the capability of dealing with formal and informal factors to integrate both the internal functions and supply chain members, which can provide visibility, agility and adaptability toward supply chain resilience.

The purpose of this paper was to identify and describe the personal values that motivate and guide the cognitive structure of Brazilian wine consumers from the viewpoint of the means-end chain theory.

In this qualitative descriptive study, 40 in-depth laddering interviews were conducted in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, which were transcribed and codified from the attributes, consequences, and values that emerged in the discourse of the wine consumers. The codes were subsequently graded – in accordance with the level of abstraction – and inserted into the LadderUx® software to generate the implication matrix and the hierarchical value map. The interpretation of the cognitive structure of the wine consumers occurred descriptively.

Common aspects regarding knowledge of the product linked to the ritual of wine consumption were identified among consumers. The psychological factors basically describe the social aspects that are pertinent to the drink’s consumption and to aspects focused on the personal training that leads to consumption satisfaction. Both converge in the search for more knowledge about the world of wine. From this cognitive basis, the existence of the instrumental values of hedonism, benevolence/care, stimulation and achievement could be seen, as well as the terminal values of joy and happiness.

This study presents the cognitive structure of the Brazilian consumers of wine. This result allows some insights in an initial perspective for the development of strategies, based on the factors that motivate the purchase of the drink, thus attracting new consumers to this emerging market.