Multidisciplinary Project Teams

IntroductIon Knowledge in designing a product or rendering a service does not form a complete and coherent body of knowledge that can be precisely documented or even articulated by a single individual. Rather, it is a form of knowing that exists only through the interaction among various collec-has highlighted a need for the development of a diverse workforce if knowledge creation is to be promoted and sustained within organisations. This literature suggests that a diverse set of resources (experts with different backgrounds and abilities) provides a broad knowledge base at the individual level, offering greater potential for knowledge creation. Conceptually, a team can be viewed as a socially constructed phenomenon or linking mechanism that integrates individuals and organisations (Horvath, Callahan, Croswell, & Mukri, 1996). A multidisciplinary team is defined by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995, p. 85) as " a self-managed, self-organised team in which members from various functional departments, and/or areas of expertise work together to accomplish a common goal. " The primary goal of the multidisciplinary composition is to marry diverse bodies of knowledge in a way that produces a synergistic knowledge outcome that is innovative, contextualised, and, as such, has strategic value. For the most part, project team tasks are nonrepetitive in nature and involve considerable application of knowledge, judgement, and expertise. The advantage of adopting multidisciplinary project teams is that they are quicker in integrating the expert knowledge of different functions, for example, design, construction, marketing, maintenance, and accounting. Cross-functional project teams with mutual accountability and collective work products have been found to decrease development time and increase product Multidisciplinary project teams create a " task culture, " facilitating the necessary close linkages and direct personal contacts between dif-3277 Multidisciplinary Project Teams ferent functions (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). These close connections are necessary, as new product development by its very nature includes uncertainty about potential market response and about new technology (Henke, Krachenberg, & Lyons, 1993). This transformation process is a team-level phenomenon. It emerges through " heedful interrelationships " (Weick & Roberts, 1993) and interdependencies between team members, their actions and interactions, and the enmeshment of their individual knowledge paradigms. If creating new collective knowledge is indeed a team-level phenomenon, then the multidisciplinary team is considered the greenhouse where such a phenomenon can be best cultivated. This article views the multidisciplinary project team as an unusual team arrangement, primarily because it is composed of professionals from …