The Role of Identity in Supporting a Shared Reality On Cross-Functional Project Teams

Abstract

Project structures have become a dominating form to organize and accomplish work in firms today. This study focused on firms that source the functional expertise needed to support project implementations on a temporary basis from their organizational hierarchy. In this matrixed structure, individuals reside in two social worlds, that of the project team and that of their functional team. The purpose of this quantitative study was to understand the effect of social identity on cross-functional project teams’ communication and their ability to develop a shared reality with other project team members. In this study, we surveyed 212 members of cross-functional project teams in the financial services sector. We found that a strong functional identity was positively related to the ability of an individual to understand what is being communicated from another discipline. The ability to understand someone from another discipline was positively related to a successful project outcome. This study contributes to the literature on team social identity by demonstrating how it is mediated by effective communication across functional boundaries to create successful project outcomes.