Management of cross-functional teams: The impact of motivation and Human Resources on efficiency in Swedish organizations

Abstract: Abstract Background: Facing an ever-changing, complex business world, organizations have become increasingly reliant on methods of dealing with complexity. One contemporary approach is the increasing utilization of cross-functional teams, composed of employees from different individual functions in business organizations. Ensuring the performances of cross-functional teams is increasingly important as their rate of utilization is increasing. Affecting cross-functional performance, motivation has been defined as one, among many factors affecting teams’ performance. Human Resources (HR) in organizations could allow practices for motivating the cross-functional team members. Purpose: This study examined the management of cross-functional teams’ motivation in Swedish organizations. Specifically, the impact of Human Resource practices on cross-functional teams to increase performance through motivation. Method: By conducting a triangulation of methods, survey data was collected from cross-functional team members, compared, and contrasted with interviews conducted with managers with HR-expertise, and built on contemporary literature. Conclusion: By focusing on the management of cross-functional teams, the study showed that the motivation of team members is highly influenced by Human Resource strategies. Through strategies, managers in organizations could effectively affect the performance of individuals and of the teams for them to perform effectively. The study showed that several Human Resource practices, like training and development of human capital, communication, and empowerment, are required, as these affect factors of cross-functional team motivation. An important aspect is that the factors and strategies that impact cross-functional team motivation are interconnected to team efficiency. Motivation alone is not sufficient, but it has positive connotations on the performance of the cross-functional teams. Therefore, as these aspects work in conjunction and have different impacting goals, these should be viewed holistically when setting up and implementing practices dealing with factors of motivation. Conclusively, the implementation of Human Resource practices impacting motivational factors is fundamental toPage | 3maintain and develop effective cross-functional teams and thereby increase organizations’ performance efficiency.