Roberta canizales is the ceo of mucho dinero enterprises. she is concerned about her firm as sales have declined for four consecutive years and the firm's accountants have reported net losses in each of the last two years. employees appear demoralized and frustrated. recently, roberta met with managers from marketing, production, and finance to listen to their view regarding the company's problems. the managers unanimously agreed that the main problem was a lack of communication between the several functional areas of the business. each manager felt that the firm could increase quality and customer satisfaction with better interdepartmental communication. roberta also met with marketing and production employees to get their respective opinions on the problems of the firm. one employee from the production department observed that, "we have so many layers of management that it takes forever to make decisions." an employee from marketing complained that, "this place is so bogged down with rules and regulations that there is no opportunity to be creative." several employees shared their opinions regarding their bosses. specifically, one employee expressed "my boss never pays attention to my ideas. he just issues orders and expects me to obey them." roberta decided, after listening to many comments from employees, suppliers, and customers, that the only way to end mucho dinero's slide was to completely rethink the firm's structure and to make radical changes in its organization. she presented her ideas to the board of directors, promising to voluntarily resign if her efforts to reorganize did not return the firm to profitability. in order to encourage more interdepartmental communication and cooperation, roberta is thinking about setting up groups of workers from different departments to work together on a long-term basis. she is even thinking about asking people from some of mucho dinero's suppliers, customers and distributors to join these groups. the type of group that roberta is considering is known as a(n):