The Interaction Effect of Goal Misalignment and Metaknowledge Distribution on Team Decision Making in Operations and Supply Chain Management

Abstract

Many strategic decisions concerning firms’ operations and supply chain management (OSCM) are executed in teams of multiple functional specialists, to reap the proven benefits of internal integration. However, specialists bring with them not only diverse expertise, but also diverse goals and incentive structures. We examine how functional goal misalignment and the distribution of knowledge of who knows what (metaknowledge) affect self‐serving politics and the performance of cross‐functional teams. To test our model, we develop a vignette‐based social team experiment and analyze data from 468 participants grouped in 156 sourcing teams. Our results provide evidence for both catalyst and inverse‐catalyst effects of the distribution of metaknowledge. Specifically, under goal alignment, centralized metaknowledge leads to the catalyzation of cross‐functional expertise, reducing team politics and enhancing team performance. However, under goal misalignment, centralized metaknowledge significantly amplifies team politics and reduces performance via mediation. We contribute to the growing body of research on behavioral OSCM at the team level of analysis by offering theoretical and practical implications for the design of team integration processes from the perspective of organizational politics and group cognition. We also provide management with clear design recommendations regarding how to govern cross‐functional OSCM teams in terms of functional goals and the distribution of metaknowledge.