This study focuses on the initial conditions of work teams and the impacts of these conditions on the development of teams' transactive memory (TM) systems through computational modeling. TM theory describes the conditions under which team members retrieve and allocate information to accomplish collective tasks. Previous research has shown evidence for teams developing TM systems over time, but field research does not allow for the extensive manipulation of initial conditions a team might face when working together; conversely, this experimental research allowed for such manipulations without negatively impacting the ongoing productivity of organizations. Initial knowledge, initial accuracy of expertise recognition, and network size are explored as predictor variables on the development of a TM system as mediated through communication. System development is measured by the degree to which team members accurately perceive other members' expertise and the extent to which the system has differentiated its stored knowledge. This study includes theoretically derived propositions tested through a path analysis of computationally generated data. The analysis validates the five propositions and is consistent with the developmental mechanisms of TM theory. Three additional paths proved to be significant and directly connect the initial conditions with the developmental indicators at the end state model.

The goal of this study is to understand how consultants' information seeking from human and digital knowledge sources is influenced by their relationships with both types of knowledge sources and the characteristics of the knowledge domain in which information seeking takes place. Grounded on and extending transactive memory theory, this study takes a multidimensional approach to predict consultants' information seeking based on expertise recognition, source accessibility, peer information-seeking behaviors, knowledge complexity, and codifiability. Using data collected from 110 consultants across 9 project teams from 2 multinational consulting firms, this study found that consultants' information seeking from human knowledge sources was mostly driven by the expertise and accessibility level of their team members, whereas their information seeking from digital knowledge repositories was strongly influenced by how much information the digital knowledge source had and whether colleagues with whom they had strong social communication ties were seeking information from the digital source. Finally, knowledge complexity had a negative influence on consultants' information seeking from digital knowledge repositories, but knowledge codifiability had no significant effects on information seeking from either knowledge source. This study demonstrates the importance and viability of using a multidimensional network approach to advancing transactive memory theory to study consultants' information-seeking practices.

Organizational members vary in their ability to accurately recognize each other's expertise. The goal of this study is to extend transactive memory theory to understand how organizational group members develop accurate perceptions of others' knowledge through a multidimensional access to expertise cues. Specifically, this study examines how a group member's accuracy in expertise recognition is influenced by one's centralities in the communication network, use of digital knowledge repositories, and work remoteness. By analyzing data collected from 208 individuals from 17 organizational groups, this study found that a member's accuracy in expertise recognition was positively influenced by one's degree centrality in the communication network and negatively influenced by the extent to which one's work was done remotely. Furthermore, there was an interaction effect between work remoteness and use of digital knowledge repositories such that the negative influence of work remoteness on expertise recognition was weaker when members used digital knowledge repositories.

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Not all creative ideas end up being implemented. Drawing on micro-innovation literature and achievement goal theory, we propose that the interplay of two types of work motivational climates (mastery and performance) moderates a curvilinear relationship between the frequency of idea-generation and idea-implementation behavior. Field studies in two non-Western countries (China, with a study of 117 employees nested within 21 groups, and Slovenia, with a study of 240 employees nested within 34 groups) revealed a three-way interaction of idea generation, performance climate, and mastery climate as joint predictors of idea implementation. Specifically, results of random coefficient modeling show that when combined, mastery and performance climates transform the relationship between the frequency of idea generation and idea implementation from an inverse U-shaped curvilinear relationship to a positive and more linear one. These findings suggest that ideas are most frequently implemented in organizational contexts characterized by both high-mastery and high-performance climates. Implications for research and practice are discussed.