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# Cross functional teams: A key for improving systems thinking in an organization

## Details

**Authors** Gjorgjievski, Ivan and Galovska, Biljana and Grujoski, Filip

**Year** 2024

**Publisher** XX International May Conference on Strategic Management, IMCSM24 Proceedings, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 310-317

**Kind of work** proceedings

**Discipline** Business & Management

**Secondary disciplines** Psychology

**Kind of engagement** scholarly

**Applied** false

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.5937/IMCSM24031G) 
10.5937/IMCSM24031G

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To argue that cross-functional teams are a key pillar in developing systems thinking capacity in micro, small, and medium-sized organizations, and to situate that argument against the VUCA environment using DSRP as the organizing framework for team competences.

### Who or what was studied (sample)

A survey of 169 managers and employees in North Macedonia, conducted October to December 2023, rating twenty-four scenarios on a five-point scale, grouped into six scenarios for each of the four patterns.

### How they did it (methods)

A narrative conceptual literature review combined with descriptive statistics from the authors' own survey. The argument moves from a definition of systems thinking, through a definition of cross-functional teams that includes a critique of team overuse, to the VUCA environment, and then into four sections organized by pattern, each carrying its own survey table. No inferential test is performed.

### What they found (results)

The authors conclude that cross-functional teams are a key pillar in the development of systems thinking capacity, on the grounds that they encourage collaboration, meta-communication, innovation, and holistic problem-solving, and that their adaptability also helps organizations respond to VUCA conditions. In the survey, distinction scenarios drew the highest share of extremely easy ratings at 61.1 percent on average and the authors read distinction as the workforce's most developed competence; systems averaged 46.2 percent, relations 42.9 percent, and the perspectives block 33.7 percent. Within perspectives, 59.2 percent found it extremely easy to see a situation from multiple viewpoints while 23.1 percent found it extremely easy to change a decision on the strength of those viewpoints. The authors single out the pay-to-work and informal-relationship items under relations for further research and propose cross-functional teams as the remedy for the weaknesses the survey exposes.

## Commentary

### In short

Three researchers at Business Academy Smilevski in North Macedonia survey 169 managers and employees using six scenarios for each of the four patterns, then argue from the pattern-by-pattern results that cross-functional teams are how a small organization builds systems thinking capacity.

### In more detail

The paper is explicit about where its framework comes from, naming the DSRP model developed by the Cabrera Lab as the structure for the team competences it examines and describing the work as heavily influenced by Derek Cabrera. DSRP is also the paper's keyword. What makes the engagement unusual is the unit of analysis. Most DSRP measurement work scores an individual on a task; here the four patterns are turned into a workforce instrument, with six workplace scenarios per pattern rated on a five-point ease scale by 169 managers and employees across Macedonian organizations, and the paper's body is then organized into four sections, one per pattern, each reporting its own table. The results are read as a profile rather than a score. Distinction comes out strongest, at 61.1 percent of ratings in the extremely easy band, though the weakest item inside it, using specific details when describing an idea, sits at 45.6 percent. Systems at 46.2 percent and relations at 42.9 percent follow, with the relations block showing the flattest distribution and the authors flagging two items, linking pay to work and informal relationships, as needing further study. Perspectives produces the paper's sharpest observation: a majority find it easy to see a situation through more than one set of eyes, and under a quarter find it easy to change a decision as a result, which the authors describe as a gap between believing in multiple perspectives and being willing to act on them. The surrounding argument draws on Cabrera on wicked problems and organizational learning, and on the LAMO model, Linear Anthropocentric Mechanistic Ordered, which the paper uses to set a multivalent world against the mental habits organizations bring to it. The conclusion is that cross-functional teams, by composition, force the distinctions, part-whole framings, relationships, and perspectives that the survey finds thinly distributed.

### Response

The paper gets the central thing right: it treats the four patterns as separable competences that can be unevenly distributed in the same population, and it reports them separately rather than averaging them into one systems-thinking figure. That is what lets its most interesting result appear at all. The perspectives gap, where 59.2 percent find multiple viewpoints easy to adopt and 23.1 percent find them easy to act on, distinguishes recognizing a perspective from taking one, and it is a finding about the P pattern that the survey literature on systems thinking does not usually isolate. The instrument itself is where the paper is weakest, and the weakness is not DSRP's. No reliability statistic is reported for the twenty-four scenarios, nothing is tested inferentially, and self-rated ease of a described scenario is a report about confidence as much as about capacity, so the ordering of the four patterns should be read as suggestive rather than established. Two errors should be corrected before the figures are reused: the perspectives section cites the 2.1 to 2.6 average as its own when those scenarios belong to the distinctions block, and the text gives 16.1 percent for scenario 1.5 where the table gives 16.6 percent. The paper also renames Relationships as Relations throughout, which is harmless here but makes the section hard to match against the literature.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P

**Added** 2026-10-26

**How to cite this** Gjorgjievski, Ivan and Galovska, Biljana and Grujoski, Filip (2024). Cross functional teams: A key for improving systems thinking in an organization. XX International May Conference on Strategic Management, IMCSM24 Proceedings, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 310-317.