Cooperating without Co-laboring，How Formal Organizational Power Moderates Cross-functional Interaction in Project Teams.pdfVIP

Administrative Science Quarterly 2017, Vol. 62(1)179–214 Cooperating without The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: Co-laboring: How / journalsPermissions.nav Formal Organizational DOI: 10.1177/0001839216655090 /home/asq Power Moderates Cross-functional Interaction in Project Teams Trevor Young-Hyman1 Abstract I examine how different distributions of ownership and governance rights in firms affect the optimal organization of cross-functional project teams for knowledge-intensive work. I analyze multi-method data from two competing automated manufacturing equipment engineering firms with contrasting formal power structures, one a worker cooperative with ownership and governance rights distributed across occupations and the other a conventional firm with ownership and governance rights concentrated in the hands of several senior workers in one occupational group. Contrary to prior research, my findings sug- gest that when collective tasks are uncertain and complex, the benefits of cross-functional interactions depend on organizations’ formal power structure: cross-functional interactions improve teams’ productivity in the context of con- centrated ownership and governance rights but not when ownership and gov- ernance rights are widely distributed among workers. Fieldwork at the two firms revealed three mechanisms by which dispersed formal power decreases the productivity benefits of cross-functional interaction: it reduces status dis- tinctions among team members, increasing the labor hours required to