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nalization. Internalization is the conversion of the newly created explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge. When this occurs, individuals are able to quickly and easily identify the relevant knowledge for performing the task required. For this to occur, the explicit knowledge available has to be made known and jointly used on a regular basis. Opportunity to work together with the shared explicit knowledge to gain enough experience to internalize the knowledge must exist. Socialization is the process of merging tacit knowledge from an individual with tacit knowledge from another individual to create new tacit knowledge. Because the key to creating tacit knowledge is experience, the creation of joint tacit knowledge requires shared experience. Without this, it is extremely difficult for people to understand each other's mental models and the importance of the information communicated is lost. Socialization thus requires rich interactions consistent with face-to-face communications (Daft and Lengel 1986). Highlighting interfunctional initiatives' ability to facilitate information processing and knowledge creation, a plethora of empirical research has proclaimed numerous benefits achieved through interfunctional initiatives, including improved coordination, learning, reduced cycle times, lower overall development costs, and enhanced new product development (Cooper 1979; Griffin and Hauser 1996; Narver and Slater 1990; Ruekert and Walker 1987; Souder 1987; Zirger and Maidique 1990). Research also shows that these outcomes are achievable in a variety of cultural contexts (Olson, Walker, and Reukert 1995). Other research suggests that interfunctional initiatives are not panacea for success and may represent a Pandora's box of problems and challenges. Krohmer, Homburg, and Workman (2002) contend that the interfunctional dispersion of influence on activities is not always equally important, and that interfunctional decisions may not be necessarily optimal due to groupthink and the political process when multiple parties are involved. A meta-analysis by Henard and Szymanski (2001) also failed to find a statistically significant relationship between interfunctional initiatives and success when evaluating the mean correlation between functional integration and new product development success after adjusting individual correlations for sampling error and variance in measurement reliability. Various normative literature further suggest that interfunctional initiatives require more resources, more time, and greater involvement from top management (Cespedes 1995; Krohmer, Homburg, and Workman 2002; Lim and Reid 1992), and because personnel are often not trained to work in an interfunctional environment, there is discomfort working across functions and the potential for a disharmonious work environment (Souder 1987). Together these factors suggest that interfunctional initiatives do not readily offer success. At minimum, the latter evidence suggests that the success of interfunctional initiatives may be contingent on the given situation and that a company should not broadly accept a "more is better" strategy (Olson, Walker, and Ruekert 1995). The same may be said about functional initiatives in that there may be appropriateness for simply "functional silos" to apply. But is a dichotomous view of functional versus cross-functional sufficient? TYPES OF INTERFUNCTIONAL INITIATIVES A functional versus cross-functional distinction appears restrictiv