Search results

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into cross-functional team (CFT) members’ points of view on knowledge integration.

This study was conducted using Q methodology. The 22 respondents were members of CFTs in information systems development within 7 agencies of the Flemish Government administration.

The study resulted in three distinct perspectives. To the CFT player, the benefits and added value of information and knowledge diversity of CFTs outweigh the challenges of knowledge integration. By contrast, the CFT sceptic is doubtful that knowledge integration in CFTs can ever work at all. Finally, the organization critic highlights the lack of support from the organization for efficient and effective knowledge integration in CFTs.

The findings of this study suggest that CFT configurations have important implications for the development of shared team mental models and for teams’ cognitive performance.

Making CFT members aware of their peers’ mental models, ways of working and priorities could help strengthen knowledge integration. To improve knowledge integration in teams, managers should reduce knowledge boundaries that are the result of organizational structuring and power play between departments.

By focusing on daily experiences with knowledge integration, this study reveals that members of CFTs in information systems development hold contrasting perspectives on, and diverging attitudes towards, knowledge integration.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the areas and logic of integration of different stakeholders using different methods and to analyse their applicability and challenges in practical projects. The main aim is to describe how these different methods impact value creation.

Action design research was carried out in a large hospital construction project where the first author acted as an “involved researcher” and the second author acted as an “outside researcher”. Two workshops were organised to evaluate the direct and indirect challenges and benefits of the applied four methods and to explain how different methods enable value creation.

All the studied methods provide good results in terms of usability and commitment to the aims of the project, thus delivering the direct benefits expected. Process, people and tools logic works well in this case project when applying the methods properly. Significant evidence was provided on secondary deliverables of the methods, and all analysed methods had a significant impact in the area of leading people, clarifying what “focus on people” means and how it is enabled.

Focus on people can be achieved through different operative methods if applied in the right way. It is necessary to select the most suitable methods based on all the direct and indirect deliverables.

This case project offered a platform to analyse integration methods in a real-life project using the collaborative contract method. The authors were able to participate in the analysis by taking action from the very beginning of the project in terms of training, learning, continuous development and coaching of these methods and evaluating the applicability.

The purpose of this paper is to define the integration capability dimensions and create a model for self-assessing the integration capability in inter-organizational projects.

A theoretical construct of, referred in this study as integration capability framework is elaborated following a systematic literature review. Thereafter, an integration capability self-assessment model, based on maturity thinking, is derived from the theoretical framework. The self-assessment model is further developed and tested for validity within five inter-organizational project networks in cooperation with industry practitioners, representing construction, industrial engineering, and mining sectors.

The results show that inter-organizational projects can use the developed model in self-assessing the maturity levels of various integration mechanisms, thus the state of integration capability at any point in time during inter-organizational projects.

This study is an attempt to identify how the integration capability dimensions can be self-assessed in inter-organizational projects, through the maturity levels of various integration mechanisms. The results offer insights for both academics and project management practitioners.

The increasing complexity of civil engineering projects necessitates focusing on new competencies of project participants. Based on the research on team performance and design processes that are more closely linked to the relevance of the project context, it is hypothesised that empathic abilities could play an important role in the performance of civil engineering projects. Therefore, this study aims to investigate whether performance can be improved by focusing on empathic abilities during the integrated design phase.

Semi-structured in-depth interviews with experts were conducted to explore the relevance of empathic abilities and their interaction with performance in a real-life infrastructure project. The project team’s empathy level was measured by means of a survey using Davis’ Interpersonal Reactivity Index method. Finally, differences between expected and measured levels of empathy were analysed.

The results provide insights into how empathic abilities interact with performance. The measurement indicates that, on average, professionals in the civil engineering industry score relatively low on empathy. In addition, differences were identified between the expected distribution and the measured empathy levels of the team, implying a potential for improvement, in particular by increasing the empathic abilities of the project management and increasing gender diversity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate a relationship between empathy and the performance of civil engineering projects. The results provide initial insights into the empathic ability of civil engineering project teams and the potential of empathy to improve performance. Furthermore, from an empathy perspective, this study advocates increasing the gender diversity of project teams to improve performance.

By using the lens of effectuation and causation, this paper aims at exploring how the team is formed in high-tech academic spinoffs, by looking specifically at decisional heuristics in an academic context. Indeed, the team composition is a critical issue for the subsequent growth of the academic new venture: on the one hand, the scientific-centred knowledge of the academic entrepreneurs is one of the main elements that lay the foundation for the new venture; on the other hand, it has been widely recognized that the lack of market-related knowledge and experience often has detrimental effects on performance. Decisive is then to explore how team decisions pertaining to the team formation process are taken.

A qualitative methodology based on multiple case studies is adopted under an abductive approach.

Results shed light on how decisions pertaining to team formation are taken by academic entrepreneurs and with what effects on team composition, a fundamental element to foster the growth of academic new ventures. Specifically, this study derives some propositions about the adoption of effectuation and causation in the team formation process, their occurrence and sequence in the light of the scientific context in which academic new ventures spin out and the effects on the team composition.

This study contributes to the debate on academic entrepreneurs’ decisional heuristic and the use of effectuation or causation in the early stages of an academic new venture, by focusing on the team formation process. This study specifically considers three temporal micro-phases – the selection of founders before inception, the appointment of top management teams, and the integration of early employees after the inception – and whether the academic context influences the decisional heuristics. Managerial implications are also derived.

This study aims to examine direct effects of qualified team gatekeepers on absorptive capacity (AC), and the mediating roles of combinative capabilities – knowledge integration capability (KIC) and interteam coordination.

A social networking analysis was used to analyze a unique data set collected from all members of 32 Japanese research and development (R&D) teams to identify key individuals who perform daily gatekeeping functions. This study analyzed the data through partial least squares structural equation modeling with higher-order latent variables. Finally, cross-validation tests were used with holdout samples to test the model’s predictive validity.

Qualified gatekeepers directly contribute to teams’ realized AC but not to their potential AC. Furthermore, qualified gatekeepers can improve their teams’ capability to absorb and exploit external knowledge by facilitating their capability to consolidate knowledge, that is, its KIC and interteam coordination.

Unlike prior research that asks top managers to identify team gatekeepers, this study used social network analysis to identify these vital individuals. This study provides a new framework indicating how qualified gatekeepers impact the AC of R&D teams through the examination of both the direct and indirect paths of gatekeeping abilities, two combinative capabilities as mediators and team AC.

This paper is to explore how cross-functional integration (CFI) of production-marketing can impact the firm's build-to-order (BTO) competitiveness, marketing performance (MP) and financial performance (FP).

Empirical study with the structural equation modeling approach is applied. Six hypotheses are constructed and tested based on survey data collected from Chinese manufacturing firms.

The survey data supports that production-marketing integration (PMI) improves BTO competitiveness (BTOC) and MP and that BTOC also positively affects marketing outcome which, in turn, impacts a firm's FP. The results reveal that CFI of production-marketing is an effective approach for achieving the BTO manufacturing strategy and can improve organizational performance.

The paper uncovers the role of CFI of production-marketing in BTO manufacturing strategy and its impacts on a firm's MP and FP and provides important managerial implications for practitioners to improve organizational time-based competitiveness and performance in today's time-based competition era.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the understanding of socialization in the context of temporary operations and organizational settings, using project alliance – the most contemporary approach to the management of large and complex projects – as an example. In particular, the paper also assesses how informal and formal socialization mechanisms are used to facilitate relational capital in such a setting.

Data were collected by two case studies of complex infrastructure projects in a Northern European city. The analysis focuses on how socialization is managed across organizational interfaces within the alliance organization during the project tendering and development phase to create relational capital.

The findings indicate that significant emphasis is put on socialization in project alliances. However, while in the tendering phase both informal and formal socialization mechanisms are used to create relational capital; in the development phase informal socialization mechanisms are associated with higher levels of relational capital and formal socialization mechanisms are used to maintain the level of relational capital.

While operations and supply chain management research argues that socialization is critical to manage organizational interfaces and to create relational capital in buyer-supplier relationships, research has mainly focused on ongoing operations. This study complements the prior research by developing further insight into socialization in the context of temporary operations and organizational settings; such settings create a unique empirical context, posing different managerial challenges as the results also indicate.

Quality in the construction industry is an important issue yet ignored during the initial stages of the life cycle of a project, that is, the design and construction stage. The contribution of stakeholders, especially the architects is generally suspended though it has huge significance in terms of cost and time related to quality. This research endeavors to examine the issues related to the design and construction stages of the project from architects' purview, to understand the relative importance of these issues in the Indian construction industry.

The study of qualitative data conducted formed a basis for online quantitative data collection that was further analyzed with the help of cross-tabulation and multiple correspondence analysis methods.

The study concludes that the budget of a project is a corresponding factor related to quality concern for architects. The study also established that the quality issues corresponding to high budgets are closely related to the construction stage and are identified as preparation of checklist, and bidding process of hiring the contractor on the lowest bid.

The study is limited to analyzing the perspective of architects; however, other stakeholders of the construction industry may represent a different opinion.

This research emphasizes the importance of the client's role, and need for integration and coordination among stakeholders in the construction industry for effective quality control and management.

The research presents an exhaustive literature review on quality issues and its importance with respect to cost implications, standard practices, sustainability and the life cycle of the project.

The macroeconomic changes as well as the challenges facing universities nowadays result in the transfer and adaptation of various concepts and organizational methods from enterprises to universities. One of such solutions is mergers. Even though there are a very large number of practical examples of university mergers in the world, at the same time there is a shortage of frameworks that would help manage mergers. The purpose of this paper is to present key areas of focus in HEIs’ consolidation processes and the creation of the conceptual model of the universities’ mergers.

In this paper synthesis, the inductive approach for model development and case study description were used. The analysis and findings were based on the systematic literature review taken out from management and public policy areas. The new public management and public value governance approaches as well as strategic and process theories of mergers were applied. The descriptive approach to management was used as well.

Formulation of a Conceptual Model of Universities’ Mergers and ten principles of effective management of universities’ mergers that cover the entire process, from planning, through implementation, to integration.

There is a need to verify the proposed inductive model of universities’ mergers through further qualitative and mixed-methods research studies.

The paper offers a significant opportunity for practical application of the presented content, because it indicates how the know-how from one (business) sector can be valuable for the future of another sector (the over-fragmented sector of higher education).

This study presents the key areas of focus in HEIs’ consolidation processes and proposes a novel Conceptual Model of Universities’ Mergers. It concludes with the principles of effective management of universities’ mergers.