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Knowledge-Sharing in Cross-Functional Virtual Teams

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Knowledge-sharing in cross-
functional virtual teams
Jacky F. L Hong
Associate Professor, Faculty ofBusiriess Adm¡r)istratíon, University of Macau, Macau, China

Sara Vai
Companhia de Telecomuritcaçôes de Macau (CTM), Macau, China

The emergence of cross-functional virtual teams has presented both benefits and challenges to
organisations. However, the unique characteristics of virtual teams make the sharing of
knowledge among the geographically separated members difficult. This paper attempts to
address this issue by looking at how the process of knowledge transfer takes place in a cross-
functional virtual team. A case study is conducted to interview various cross-functional virtual
team members in one local subsidiary of a multinational telecommunication corporation as well
as two of its hardware vendors. The findings indicate that four knowledge-sharing mechanisms
are being employed, including shared understanding, learning climate, job rotation and
coaching. Among them, shared understanding and learning climate are thought to be able to
solve the challenge related to the unwillingness among the virtual team members to participate
in the knowledge-sharing process, whereas coaching and job rotation are argued to be the
solutions for the lack of collective competence required for performing the co-operative
works. Some practical implications are also suggested for the effective management of cross-
functional virtual teams.

Introduction
Cross-functional virtual work teams have been around for a while. They are
identified as a group of people who work interdependently with a shared goal
across space, time and organisation boundaries by using the latest information
and communication technology (ICT) (Brown, 1998; Dube and Pare, 2004;
Crenier and Metes, 1995; Lipnack and Stamps, 2000; Martins et al, 2004).
They have given organisations unprecedented opportunities to bring people
located in different geographical locations together, including employees,
representatives from external stakeholders such as suppliers, clients, vendors
and joint venture partners, to work on a common initiative over a long period
of time (Montoya-Weiss et al, 2001). For example, Hewlett Packard had
reportedly been using various virtual teams to develop new products and
services in its IT Resource Centre (Raths, 2001). A number of benefits can be
attributed to the use of cross-functional virtual teams, including quality
improvement, shorter response time, improved socialisation and better
sharing of knowledge (Jessup and Kukahs, 1990; McCartt and Rohrbaugh,
1989; Townsend etal, 1998).

journal of General Management Vol. 34 No. 2 Winter 2008 21-37

Jacky F. L. Hong and Sara Vai

However, there is limited understanding about how the process of know-

ledge-sharing takes place in these teams (Blackurn et al, 2003; Corso et al,
2006; Griffith and Sawyer, 2006). As the separation of team members in
dispersed physical locations reduces the opportunity for having frequent face-
to-face interactions - a crucial requirement for effective sharing of tacit
knowledge (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) - this can
make the knowledge-sharing process difficult (Wilson, 2003), if not impos-
sible. Past researches suggest the use of some technological fixes (King and
Majchrzak, 2003) for overcoming the physical dispersions in cross-functional
virtual teams to facilitate the knowledge transfer, such as advanced commu-
nication networks and groupware systems (Barrett etal, 2004; Boudreau etal,
1998; Haake and Pino, 1998). However, the results are far from satisfactory,
since the reliance on information technology alone cannot substitute the
social dynamics underlying the knowledge-sharing in virtual knowledge
communities (Robey etal, 2000; Storckand Hill, 2000). For cross-functional
virtual teams requiring the skills and knowledge from a whole range of people
in different physical locations, the major challenge is to establish a "social
infrastructure that allows the transfer of knowledge and information" (Corso
et al, 2003; p. 207), an issue that is yet to be resolved.
The main objective of this paper is to investigate what facilitates the social
process of knowledge-sharing in a cross-functional virtual team. In-depth
interviews with participants of a cross-functional virtual team involving
operational managers, top management and some IT specialists were con-
ducted in the local subsidiary of a multinational telecommunication company
in Macau, a special administration region (SAR) of People's Republic of
China, and also two of its hardware vendors. The findings indicated that four
different organisational mechanisms, including shared understanding, learn-
irig climate, coaching and job rotation were employed to facilitate knowledge-
sharing processes amongst the virtual teammates. By understanding how tbe
cross-functional virtual team members actually engage in the day-to-day
knowledge works, the study aims to contribute to the ongoing debate about
knowledge transfer and sharing at the intra-firm level (Argote et al, 2000;
Szulanski, 1996,2000) and extend it into tbe virtual team setting (Griffith and
Sawyer, 2006; Robey etal, 2000; Sole and Edmondson, 2002). Some practical
irriplications were also suggested for the better management of cross-func-
tional virtual teams. The paper is divided into four parts. Part two surveys
some of the background literature pertinent to tbe cross-functional virtual
teams and tbe related knowledge-sbaring mechanisms. Description of method
and research design is presented in part three. While the empirical evidence
from the qualitative interviews in the telecommunication company and its
hardware vendors are examined and explored in part four, conclusions are
presented in tbe part five, followed by some practical suggestions and
directions for future research.

Background literature
The cross-functional virtual work team is commonly known as the one wbere
members are separated by space and time to work together primarily tbrough

22 Journal of General Management Vol. 34 No. 2 Winter 2008

 Knowledge-sharing in cross-functional virtual teams

ICT (Dubé and Paré, 2003; Montoya-Weiss et al, 2001). Cross-fiinctional

virtual team membership composition is more dynamic than in traditional
teams, as it includes members from locations that would not have traditionally
worked together. It represents a major structural alternative from traditional
workgroups because of the ability to transform quickly according to changing
task requirements and responsibilities. This dynamism requires virtual team
members to be particularly adaptable to cope with different management
challenges. However, the management and co-ordination of transfer of
knowledge and ideas among individuals and functional groups could be a
challenging aspect of the job (Lovelace et al, 2001; Sethi et al, 2001). It is of
vital importance for the cross-functional virtual team members to share the
information and know-how required for the implementation of joint tasks.
Lussier and Achua (2004) state that the premise behind any cross-functional
teams concept is that the opportunities for sharing information and cross-
fertilisation of ideas amongst people from different functional areas (pro-
duction, marketing, R&D, information systems, etc.) are essential. This is
especially true for cross-functional virtual teams charged with developing
innovative products/services or new technologies. Developing an effective
cross-functional virtual team goes well beyond the technical problem of
linking them together. As all the team members increasingly interact in a
virtual mode, it is imperative that they participate in the situated knowledge
processes (Sole and Edmondson, 2002) that are crucial for the organisational
success.
There are reportedly two main kinds of problems and challenges related to
management of the knowledge process in virtual teams. The first challenge is
to overcome team members' reluctance to participate in the shared knowledge
works. The loosely defined structure, varied members' background, fluid
membership and lack of prior joint work experience increase the degree of
demographic diversity and psychological distance in virtual teams (Dubé and
Paré, 2003) and the dispersed organisational affiliations may affect how they
perceive and identify each other. This may reduce their motivation to
participate in the social interactions and knowing in practice (Orlikowski,
2002). The second challenge is to minimise the problem related to the lack of
"mutual knowledge" (Cramton, 2001), or "knowledge that the communicat-
ing parties share in common" (p. 346), and the related negative consequences
on the mutual engagement in action. Having unequal distribution of prior
knowledge critical for the task on hand and work-related competence puts
each member on an unequal footing, thus undermining their abihty to co-
operate interdependently and give contributions to the ongoing knowledge
processes. After reviewing some background literatures (Brown, 1998; Griffith
and Sawyer, 2006; Hildreth et al, 2000; Lagerstrom and Andersson, 2003;
Sarker et al, 2005), four main mechanisms are identified as beneficial for
overcoming these two challenges. Eirst, members need to build up a shared
understanding among each other (Hinds and Weisband, 2003). Shared under-
standing in a cross-functional virtual team is the degree of cognitive overlap
and commonality in beliefs, expectations and perceptions about a given target.
Since the cross-functional virtual team members come from different depart-
ments, business disciplines and geographical locations, they have different

journal of General Management Vol. 34 No. 2 Winter 2008 23

Jacky F. L. Hong and Sara Vai

ways of perceiving the tasks and taking up the issues together (Rivenbark and
Frost, 2003). If there is a lack of common background and experiences, it is a
constant challenge to maintain the commitment, coherence and continuity of
work routines across the virtual team members, and having a shared under-
standing can help the team members to anticipate and predict the behaviour
of other people.
Second, in order for the cross-functional virtual team to turn the new
knowledge into social practices and sustain their effort, creating a learning
climate among the team members is essential (Clutterbuck, 2004). Unlike
traditional teams, cross-functional virtual teams are expected to have frequent
changes of membership without losing productivity. This does not give much
time for member to get to know each other and learn how to work collectively.
A good climate conducive for knowledge-sharing would create a social
context that gives meaning to what the virtual team members do (Orlikowski,
2002) and affords them a common orientation to each other. The learning
climate serves to generate a common ground on which the knowledge-sharing
works are structured. Third, as the cross-functional virtual team members
might include internal employees and outsiders (such as vendors) it is
important to ensure that each person shares the requisite technical knowledge
and organisational know-how through various forms of coaching in order to
enable them to participate in the ongoing social interactions and actively
engage with each other in the virtual team (Lipnack and Stamps, 2000).
Fourth, one of the best ways to get around the problem of knowledge isolation
for the cross-functional virtual team members separated by time and location
is to have job rotation across business functions and divisions. This entails the
shifting of members across different jobs to increase their exposure to a variety
of tasks and personnel. It would allow new and old members to know more
about each other and participate in developing mutual understanding and
shared practices (Gherardi etal, 1998).

Method
This study adopts a case study research method. As argued by Yin ( 1989, p. 14),
the case study method allows the researcher to investigate and represent the
complete and meaningful characteristics of real-life events. This method can
also evaluate the phenomenon from the participants' perspectives and obtain
the relevant data to help generate the answers for the research question, which
is about the knowledge-sharing practices in cross-functional virtual teams. It
is particularly useful for this case since the phenomenon under study is fluid,
exploratory and context-specific in nature (Marshall and Rossman, 1989;
Mason, 2002). This study's findings were obtained from the experience of
implementing one cross-functional virtual team in the local subsidiary of a
multinational telecommunication company, ABC, over a period of three years
from 2001 to 2004. The company was chosen as the research context because
of its rich experience with cross-functional virtual teams. ABC, a joint venture
company with capital investments from Hong Kong, British, Chinese and
Macau investors, aimed to enhance the service quality and maintain the
leadership position in a local market to cope with the advent of new

24 journal of General Management Vol. 34 No. 2 Winter 2008

 Knowledge-sharing In cross-functional virtual teams

technologies, increase of market competition and more demanding customer

requirements. One of the areas for service improvement was the billing
system. They were looking for a new billing system to provide mobile
functionality as part of their business priorities. The new billing system was
expected to charge for new and existing products and services, have a more
flexible pricing scheme and customer loyalty program and provide customer
care to their customers. With these objectives in mind, one of the major
consortium projects. Customer Care and Billing System (CCBS), was in-
itiated.
CCBS was a joint product development project with the participation of the
corporate parent in London, other subsidiaries in Panama and West Indies,
and two technology vendors from Israel and India respectively. The local
telecommunication company intended to position this project as a critical
mission for providing customer care and billing solutions. The output of
CCBS project was to develop and support mobile solutions in ABC Company
and the subsidiaries in Panama and West Indies, and then extend it to other
fixed line and internet services at a later stage. The CCBS project was started in
2001 and terminated at the end of 2003. Data collection for this study was
conducted after the project and was completed in two phases. The initial phase
was a literature review to familiarise the researchers with the conceptual
background and highlight a number of key concepts relevant for the study.
Secondary data collection was also conducted to gather archival and back-
ground information about the CCBS project from various internal sources,
which included policy documents, memos, progress reports, corporate
emails, etc. All this information would be used as tangible testimonies and a
triangulation device (Yin, 1989) for the primary interview data. The semi-
structured interviews were performed in the second phase. The semi-struc-
tured interviews were conducted from March 2004 to June 2004. The final
samples were comprised of 15 CCBS project participants, including depart-
mental managers, top management and some outsourced IT vendors in other
geographical regions (See Table 1 below). The respondents were all well-
informed about the details of CCBS project and came from different
hierarchies in the organisation (See Figure 1 below). They had a range of
five to several hundreds people directly reporting to them in their specific
organisation, with the tenure in the company from 1.5 to 22 years (Table 1).
The orientation to data collection and analysis was exploratory, with the
early stages being more open-ended than the later ones. The top management
(Program Sponsor) was interviewed first, in order to have a general under-
standing about the background and objectives of the cross-functional virtual
team project from the company's viewpoint. More in-depth interviews were
arranged with the middle-level managers (Program Manager, Project Man-
ager and Business Manager), various representatives and specialists from
different departments and the two hardware vendors. Interviewing respon-
dents from different organisational levels and functional backgrounds served
to greatly enhance knowledge about the diverse challenges encountered by the
members in this cross-functional virtual team project. During the interviews,
respondents were asked to identify their perceived knowledge-sharing barriers
and the relevant solutions. In their descriptions of their distributed knowledge

Journal of General Management Vol. 34 No. 2 Winter 2008 25

Jacky F. L. Hong and Sara Vai

Table 1: Respondents' profiles

Position Responsibility Length of Affiliation

tenure
Program • Represent local business unit at the Steering Committee 20 years Local unit
Sponsor • Co-ordinate with business units in other regions
• Ensure the centralised management and co-ordination of overall
communication for the CCBS project
Business • Provide co-ordination to endure the alignment of business process with 22 years Local unit
Manager CCBS project scope and business benefits
• Facihtate agreement and implementation of the local business process
and functional design
• Ensure the smooth local delivery of business process
Project Manager • Facilitate the implementation of CCBS technical standards 11 years Local unit
• Equip the CCBS project with required infrastructure, policies and
procedures to enable effective delivery and reporting
• Manage the technical and integration risks of local business unit
Program • Co-ordinate, manage, monitor and implement the CCBS project 4 years Local unit
Manager • Be accountable to the program sponsor and liaise with program director
in London, business units in other regions and the vendors from Israel
and India
Representative • Develop and manage the overall functional requirements from the 9 years Local unit
of Business business perspective
Office • Manage the testing risks and ensure business continuity throughout
implementation
Representative • Develop and manage the overall function requirements from the finance 10 years Local unit
of Finance Office perspective
Specialist from • Consolidate the business requirements from the mobile business 8 years Local unit
Mobile Business perspective and liaise with the vendors from Israel and India
Unit • Support local adoption testing
Specialist from • Consolidate the business requirements from the payment perspective 10 years Local unit
Payment Unit • Liaise with the vendors from Israel and India
• Support local adoption testing
Specialist from • Consolidate the business requirements from the mobile tariff 9 years Local unit
Tariff Unit perspective
• Liaise with the vendors from Israel and India
• Support local adoption testing
Specialist from • Ensure the local CCBS project solution can be adopted in a controlled 7 years Local unit
Technical team manner
Data Conversion • Ensure the delivery of data conversion to CCBS solution 1.5 year Local unit
Manager • Liaise with the vendors from Hong Kong, Israel and India
• Support local adoption testing
Site Manager A • Ensure the smooth delivery of CCBS project through participation in 12 years Vendor
the Steering Committee and vendor partnering from Israel
Expert A • Provide business development training and user acceptance testing 9 years Vendor
from Israel
Site Manager B • Ensure the smooth delivery of CCBS project through participation in 3 years Vendor
the Steering Committee and vendor partnering from India
Expert B Provide business development training and user acceptance testing 2 years Vendor
from India

26 journal of General Management Vol. 34 No. 2 Winter 2008

 Knowledge-sharing in cross-functional virtual teams

«PROGRAM SPONSOR

Local Implementation Board (LIB)

Financial manager CCBS steering committee
Business manager
Project manager
Program manager
Commercial manager Parent company
Design authority In London
Chief of Operation (COO)

Program office manager - *Program manager Program director

^
Communications representative Design authority

— Commercial manager

— Financial manager

Quailty management
manager

Application
customisation/
configuration

= Respondents

Figure 1: CCBS program governance structure

work, both the virtual team members and hardware vendors repeatedly
mentioned a number of broad mechanisms that facilitated the knowledge
transfer in a virtual team setting. Because of the salient features of these
mechanisms, data collection was focused more explicitly on the functions and
contributions of these mechanisms. In the later stage, questions became more
specific and directed, trying to engage participants in the discussions of how
the broad mechanisms could enable them to participate in the sharing of
knowledge in the cross-functional virtual team. The data analysis was carried

jourr^al of General Management Vol. 34 No. 2 Winter 2008 27

Jacky F. L. Hong and Sara Vai

in accordance with the procedures suggested by Eisenhardt (1989). The first

step was to categorise all primary and secondary data and transform them in
some way as part of the process of sorting and organising them. After !
categorising the raw data, the issue arose as to what kind of information |
was relevant and should be addressed in the study. Eour main knowledge- i
sharing dimensions were concluded, which were perceived to be equally
important among all respondents. As some measures for data verification, all '
data were taped for subsequent transcription and interviewees were invited to |
review the transcribed data and give specific comments for corrections if |
necessary.

Knowledge-sharing mechanisms in cross-functional

virtual teams
Shared understanding
Effective management of the knowledge-sharing process was found to be
crucial for the success of a cross-functional virtual team, and the first and most
critical task was to build a shared understanding among the team members.
The diverse socio-cultural background of the virtual team members in the
CCBS project made the management accept the fact that they needed to ensure
everybody was on the same path. In the CCBS project, sorne of the team
members thought the goal of this project was to replace the existing billing
system with a new one and did not care about the quality or relevance for the
local market. However, others believed that they should have a suitable, more
flexible and operational billing system to cope with the existing competitors.
The diverse understandings about the nature and meaning of the project
undermined the effectiveness of knowledge-sharing. The Program Manager
stated that:
"Shared understanding is a crucial factor to align all the virtual team
members together to deliver the same strategy and achieve the same goals,
working procedures etc. Virtual team members, sometimes operating alone
or as a small team in their isolated location, tend to behave differently if
there is no a common purpose."
Virtual team members needed to develop the shared understanding about
what they were trying to achieve, how they would achieve it, what they needed
to do and what each team member brought to the team task. Given the specific
circumstances in the virtual team involving people from different disciplines,
business units, organisations and cultures, it was natural that they had
different ways of perceiving their tasks and making sense of the situation.
The absence of a mutual and shared understanding about the team's common
goal was believed to result in failures. By developing shared understanding, the
team learned how to bridge the chasm between the thought worlds among the
members.
"Shared understanding is important for a cross-functional virtual team.
Taking another example of the grand opening of Sands (one local casino),
several teams gathered and discussed some operating procedures that

28 journal of General Management Vol. 34 No. 2 Winter 2008

 Knowledge-sharing in cross-functional virtual teams

required the inputs from the front line as well as the back ofßce staff. Without
the shared understanding and knowledge, it was not possible to achieve"
(Specialist from Payment Unit).
To develop a shared understanding was something that needed to be done
with a great deal of care. It was important because it minimised the problems
of adjustment or conflicts that arose from the incompatible goals later on.
When the organisations failed to clearly define the common purpose, it would
result in a failure.
"By not sharing the meaning and purpose of the project, the gap will be
getting wider and wider until it is too late. In order to narrow the gap, extra
manpower and time will be required, but the loss of time and revenue is
already a disaster from the business point of view" (Representative of
Finance Office).

Learning climate
Sharing a common goal is found to be important at the initial stage when
embarking on knowledge-sharing activities, but to sustain interest and effort,
the climate needs to be conducive for learning. Sometimes it is hard to bring
the cross-functional virtual members with diverse backgrounds together and
ask them to pool their knowledge voluntarily. Therefore, it is important to
develop and institutionalise the corporate values and norms of knowledge-
sharing, especially among virtual team members where the team composition
is often subject to changes. For the CCBS project, members were continuously
reminded that the final success mainly depended on their collective effort to
solve problems and develop new ideas. As time went by, they began to develop
better mutual understanding and create a comfortable climate of learning and
collaboration in order to meet the project deadline and requirements.
"Being one of the team members for the CCBS project is a very good chance
for me to learn different types of knowledge. Whether it is from the oper-
ational or management point of view, team members irom different depart-
ments or companies worked as a single team and pulled their knowledge
together for solving work-related problems" (Representative of Business
Office).
Another respondent also stressed the importance of having a corporate
culture oriented towards teamwork and learning:
"/ want to emphasise that the project belongs to everyone and different parts
of the team should be related to each other. We should not just pass the
problem to other colleagues but rather work co-operatively to find out the
solutions" (Specialist from Tariff Unit).
Throughout the process of collaboration, all team members started to realise
the implicit norms and role expectations to take up the commitment of
learning and experience new ideas. As innovation and knowledge creation all
involved the identification of knowledge gap, it was understandable that
people were often reluctant to speak out and admit their ignorance due to the
concern for the negative impact on one's reputation.

journal of General Management Vol. 34 No. 2 Winter 2008 29

Jacky F. L Hong and Sara Vai

"For the virtual team to learn, or share information and knowledge, the
individuals must overcome their reluctance to share information (both
about their unique perspectives and the limits of their abilities or knowledge)
and be open to learn from others" (Program Manager).
To establish a learning climate, the virtual team organised a daily review
meeting and used it as a venue for sharing new ideas and maintaining social
contacts. Members often took this opportunity to gain new knowledge and
discuss any pending issues with the relevant individuals. All the conversations
were witnessed by other parties and this gradually served as a domain of
common knowledge and instilled an atmosphere of learning.

Coaching
Structured coaching between virtual team members enables them to learn
from each other. Throughout the interactive and systematic coaching
process, team members can have the opportunity to observe other people
and work collaboratively for generating any new knowledge which would
benefit the team, the project or the organisation. Working with the team
leader can help define the team purpose, specify goals, develop mutual
accountability and facilitate communications that lead to high performance
results. Members have a responsibility to ensure that everyone else has the
information and know-how they need to contribute effectively. Coaching
between team members should happen naturally and willingly. However,
this was not the case for the CCBS project at the beginning stage. Owing to
their limited experience with the operation of cross-functional virtual
team, the team members were confused about what they were supposed
to do. There was no systematic guidance for them to participate in the
knowledge-sharing process and share what they knew with other fellow
team members. The Business Manager reflected upon the problematic
situation:
"Some of the team members were not willing to coach the others. They
thought they were the experts in the virtual team and they did not want to
share anything with the novice even though they were from the same area.
The reason might be that they want to protect their own turfl"
Other people in the project attributed this problem to their diverse back-
ground and occupational origins. The virtual team members might have
different cognitive orientation and work commitment since they were from
different functional areas.
"Some of the team members thought they were still the representatives of
[the] Marketing or Finance Department even though they had joined the
cross-functional virtual team. They just focused on anything related to their
own areas. They just wanted to perform well and finish their own tasks on
time. They thought there was no need to share any idea with anybody else,
because it was nothing to do with others. However, if anyone wants to have a
better performance, he/she should have team thinking and orientation.
Then, he/she would share anything with other team members even though

30 Journal of General Management Vol. 34 No. 2 Winter 2008

 Knowledge-sharing in cross-functional virtual teams

they come from different departments. Jt may also benefit the whole project if
all the relevant knowledge could be shared amongst the team" (Business
Manager).

Job rotation
One benefit of a virtual team is that members can utilise the knowledge and
skills from others in the team. This was the main reason why the ABC
company decided to launch the CCBS project. Team members were gathered
from different areas of the organisation to pool their expertise and comple-
ment each other's knowledge gap. This was openly acknowledged by the
Project Manager:
"By forming a virtual team, we can combine the team members' strengths
and overcome their weaknesses. It was also helpful at the beginning to
establish a knowledge database within the team. Later on, when it is
appropriate, we can consider rotating the team members in order to get
more ideas, information or knowledge from different people's perspectives."
The policy of job rotation was implemented with the objective of improving
both individual knowledge and the team's collective know-how. They were
also encouraged to broaden their perspectives to look at the problems from
different angles rather than just focusing on the issues of their particular
functional department.
"The way that people were selected was based on their unique expertise and
[we] expected contributions to the cross-virtual teams. After a certain
period, some of the experienced members could be encouraged to transfer
to other related areas in order to promote synergistic effects" (Business
Manager).
Sometimes job rotation not only helped promote technical knowledge, but
also facilitated their development of mutual engagement. In this study, team
members were mainly recruited from two organisational units with radically
different corporate cultures. One was very entrepreneurial, while the other one
was conservative. Throughout the co-participation process, members learned
gradually how to engage one and other to develop mutual relationships.

Conclusion and discussion

The recent emergence and popularity of cross-functional virtual teams has
brought some benefits and challenges to the organisations, but it is difficult to
ensure that all members would share their requisite knowledge effectively due
to geographical dispersion, lack of prior collaborative experience and diverse
membership background (Criffith and Sawyer, 2006; Rasmussen and Wangel,
2006). Following the sociological perspective of knowledge management
(Currie and Kerrin, 2004; Sawhney and Prandelli, 2000; Storck and Hill,
2000), this paper argues that in addition to the choice of the appropriate
communication medium and information technology (King and Majchrzak,
2003; Sarker etal., 2005), it is also important to consider the influence of social

journal of General Management Vol. 34 No. 2 Winter 2008 3 I

Jacky F. L Hong and Sara Vai

and organisational arrangements that help facilitate the knowledge-sharing

process and improve overall effectiveness (Gibson and Cohen, 2003; Martins
et al, 2004; Maznevski and Chudoba, 2000). Specifically, the findings of this
study indicate that there are four major mechanisms for enabling knowledge-
sharing in cross-functional virtual teams, namely: shared understanding,
learning climate, coaching and job rotation, each with unique contributions
to the dynamics of knowledge management in virtual teams. Both shared
understanding and learning climate can enhance the "learning intent"
(Simonin, 2004; Hamel, 1991) of the members to participate in the knowledge
transfer process. It is through the establishment of shared norms (Sarker etal,
2001; Suchan and Hayzak, 2001) and common goals (Kaiser et al, 2000) that
the team members would join hands together to realise the differences of
working habits of other cultures (Martin and Hammer, 1989) and participate
in the development of shared knowledge repertoire (Wenger, 1998) and
practices (Brown and Duguid, 1991). This helps facilitate the mutual engage-
ment process and reduce the subsequent mutual adjustment problems
(Hornett, 2004) in the virtual team setting where the members barely meet
and know each other.
On the other hand, the learning climate provides a supportive institutional
context (Nonaka and Kono, 1998) for overcoming the psychological barriers
to share knowledge as evident in most teams with limited trust (Andrews and
Delahaye, 2000). It constitutes a set of shared values and expectations about
how the virtual team members should behave to share knowledge. It also paves
the way for uniting the diverse team members, reducing the differences and
developing the joint enterprise (Wenger, 1998) as a source of coherence for the
cross-functional virtual team.
However, effective management of coaching and job rotation policies is also
important to improve the "learning capacity" (Simonin, 2004) of the indi-
vidual team members. Coaching, in the forms of training, communication,
personal observation and interactions with vendors or customers, provides
various structured occasions for the new members to participate in the
knowing in practice (Orlikowski, 2002) under a distinctively constituted
order. Throughout their daily encounter and guided instructions with other
senior members in the virtual teams, they are able to acquire the embodied
skills and absorb other embedded knowledge (Sackman, 1992; Sole and
Edmondson, 2002) to enable them to interact with other fellow team members
(Lave and Wenger, 1991). However, while coaching appears to be informal in
nature, job rotation represents a formal arrangement where the new and old
members can co-participate together (Gherardi etal, 1998). The increases in
familiarity and experiences of dealing with each other help reduce the learning
barriers due to lack of trust and confidence (Andrews and Delahaye, 2000),
thus promoting the development of joint knowledge transfer (Lagerstrom and
Andersson, 2003). Nevertheless, while the case study approach adopted in this
research provides a good tool to explore the patterns and dynamics of
knowledge-sharing in a virtual team and develop a rich understanding of
the phenomenon, there are also some limitations that might affect the internal
validity of the study.
First, the fact that all the interview data were obtained from a single

32 Journal of General Management Vol. 34 No. 2 Winter 2008

 Knowledge-sharing in cross-functional virtual teams

company may pose a question about the generalisability of the findings. As the
cross-functional virtual teams can appear in various forms and structures
(Gibson and Cohen, 2003) and face different resource constraints and
environmental challenges (King and Majchrzak, 2003), it is possible that
some other social, organisational and technological factors can also aifect the
dynamics of knowledge-sharing among the team members. The mechanisms
proposed in this paper, namely shared understanding, learning climate, job
rotation and coaching, are deemed to be relevant for those companies without
significant time pressures, because it needs a long time to build up inter-
personal trust and improve the climate in organisations. The second limita-
tion regards the data. Due to the access problems and sample availability, only
the representatives from the local subsidiary and two hardware vendors were
interviewed. Missing the voices of representatives from the units of Panama
and West Indies may compromise the scope of analysis. However, judging
from the profile of respondents (see Table 1 and Figure 1 above), it was
possible to listen to their different concerns and collect the diverse viewpoints
from different levels in the organisations. Results from the member-checking
procedure also confirmed that the interpretations had accurately reflected
their views. Moreover, the researchers were unable to participate in or observe
any activities in the cross-functional virtual team directly, so understanding of
the mechanisms and associated impact only came from interview data and
from the traces of secondary data. This is the third limitation of the study.
Good management of a cross-functional virtual team needs more than just
capital investment in information technology, and more resources should be
devoted to the teams for developing both the 1) intention and 2) capacity of
the members to share knowledge. For improving the "learning intent" of the
team members and overcoming the psychological barriers due to lack of trust,
the top management should also implement a company-wide effort to create
an enterprise context (Nonaka and Kono, 1998) conducive for knowledge-
sharing and creation, which "gives meaning to its everyday practices and
routines, defines acceptable and unacceptable behaviours, and determines the
way they (members) define problems and solutions" (Ciborra and Schneider,
1992, p. 270). The objective is to establish an overall social learning system
(Hong et al, 2006), which affects the manner in which people from different
virtual teams interact with each other. Specifically, more ongoing and regular
corporate socialisation programs are necessary to help develop mutual
understanding among virtual team members and foster a shared identity to
overcome the reluctance to participate in the collective actions of knowledge-
sharing. Conversely, more formalised staff development schemes can be
offered to the participants for improving their capacity to share knowledge.
Both the prior theories (Argote et al, 2000; Szulanski, 1996, 2000) and the
findings of this paper suggest that the level and structure of prior individual
knowledge affects the effectiveness of subsequent knowledge exchange pro-
cess. So it is necessary for the leader of a virtual team to maintain a balanced
level of knowledge similarity and diversity among the team members by
maximising the opportunities for learning and social interactions on an
ongoing basis, such as plant visits, short-term training programs, briefings
and expert guidance.

journal of General Management Vol. 34 No. 2 Winter 2008 33

Jacky F. L. Hong and Sara Vai

As a conclusion, the study has opened up the debate about the enabling
function of the social context in organisations and the impact on the overall
knowledge-sharing. But given the qualitative nature of the study, it is yet to
prove the causal relationship between these two conceptual v^ariables, which is
a potential area for further examination. Moreover, there is a chance to further
explore other dimensions of the organisational context in addition to the
shared understanding and organisational climate. One possible arena for
future research is to investigate the relationship between trust and knowledge-
sharing. In a self-managing virtual environment where the members seldom
meet each other, it would be interesting to see how the organisational trust is
developed and influences the knowledge-sharing process (Politis, 2003).
Moreover, in order to rectify the limitations of single case study and improve
the generalisability, another arena for further research is to replicate the study
in a different industry context and environment. The interested parties should
gather the data froin other similar cases, particularly those under severe time
pressure, for fine-tuning and expanding the emerging theories (Eisenhardt
and Graebner, 2007). It is foreseeable that in a fast changing environment,
more individual and organisational level mechanisms would appear to
mitigate the challenges of managing the knowledge works in a cross-func-
tional virtual team.

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