Investigating knowledge integration outcomes in exploitative teams: the role of project management practices

Purpose Project teams are highly specialized knowledge integration loci in which professionals endowed with different competencies, skills and professional expertise work together in order to achieve a common goal under time constraint. Very often, the variety of knowledge domains, the complexity and heterogeneity of tasks and the temporariness of the assignment are elements that may condition the ability of an effective result in terms of knowledge integration. As noted in a recent article appeared in Organization Science, “critical problem that these cross functional teams face is collaborating in a manner that transforms the different specialized knowledge possessed by the members into an integrative cogenerated solution” (Majchrzak et al., 2012), In this paper we selected to focus on exploitative project teams, i.e. those in which knowledge creation includes incremental advances of existing knowledge involving given operating principles, assumptions and know-how (Erhardt, 2011). In fact, the nature of knowledge work carried out in exploitative team affects the peculiarities of the knowledge integration outcomes (Okhuysen. and Eisenhardt, 2002). Building on such literature, this paper wishes to analyse whether appropriate managerial practices at project team level may foster knowledge integration outcomes in industrial settings. In our research we analysed the functioning of exploitative project teams within an organization operating in the industry of turn-key devices for power plants. Our unit of analysis is the project team, a setting where knowledge integration is highly relevant and the implementation of project management practices. The concept of knowledge integration refers to the joint exploitation of distributed knowledge in a way which permits the access to, and utilisation of, individuals’ specialised knowledge in undertaking a collective effort (Enberg, 2012).